Leaked Emails: Rio Tinto Given Environmental Protection Conditions Without Expert Approval

In the Palace of Serbia, numerous journalist crews were taking their places, and cameramen were trying to find the best angle for their shots. A joint press conference of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Vice-President of the European Commission Maroš Šefčovič, and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić was about to begin.

It was July 2024.

The evening before the conference, Scholz made an unexpected visit to Serbia, for one sole purpose – lithium. After civil protests were brought to a halt, the government had reopened the project of opening a lithium mine in western Serbia. The Jadar project has drawn the interest not only of the investor, the company Rio Tinto, but also of Germany and the European Union. Germany is the largest producer of electric cars in the EU and uses lithium-ion batteries in their production, while the EU wants to reduce its dependency on China, one of the largest lithium producers in the world.

The mine’s potential opening, however, has been met with huge protests in Serbia – some of the largest in recent years.

During the conference, Vučić stated that lithium offered enormous hope for Serbia and that the country would not miss this opportunity.

“If human lives and the environment are not fully protected, there will be no lithium mining in Western Serbia, in the vicinity of Loznica,” Vučić said.

However, documents obtained by the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS) indicate that the conditions for environmental protection were established in a way that harms the environment, and these documents were also altered and adopted without the consent of some experts.

In fact, the Institute for Nature Conservation of Serbia issued conditions to Rio Tinto for the Jadar project in August last year, outlining what needs to be protected in the area and how this should be done.

Emails, official notes, and other documents obtained by CINS reveal that some experts at the Institute were against this because they believed the conditions did not protect the environment. Some experts questioned the validity of issuing these conditions.

“…There are no conditions that can prevent the irreversible destruction of this area (at the mining field and landfill locations), as well as the habitats of numerous species,” one email reads.

Despite their opposition, the Acting Director of the Institute, Marina Šibalić, issued the conditions.

After this, some of the department heads wrote official notes describing what had happened.

How it all began

A few days after Olaf Scholz’s visit, the Institute for Nature Conservation of Serbia received a request from Rio Sava Exploration, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto in Serbia, to issue nature protection conditions for the Jadar project.

This document serves as a guide to the investor on how to implement the project without harming the environment.

One of the department heads at the Institute sent a notification about this, along with the accompanying documentation and the initial division of responsibilities, to a joint mailing list. It included employees from expert services, primarily those who would be involved in drafting the conditions.

At the very beginning, biologist Ivan Medenica responded that after analyzing and comparing the data, he encountered “a highly complex and practically impossible situation.” In his opinion, there were no conditions that would prevent the irreversible destruction of nature.

He requested that other colleagues express whether they agreed with him or believed there was a possibility of issuing conditions. Eight experts subsequently agreed with him.

However, the solution they arrived at was to issue the conditions regardless of whether the investor would be able to comply with them.

According to the documents, three teams worked on drafting the conditions.

One group of experts focused on the preservation of protected species of plants and animals. A second team worked on the protection of so-called non-living nature, such as underground and surface waters, rocks, ravines, and caves. The third group worked towards solutions on how to integrate the mining project with areas used by people, such as fields and forests.

On August 21, after working on drafting the conditions for just over a week, they received a surprising revelation.

The Director’s conditions

Marina Šibalić is an architect by profession, and before becoming the Acting Director of the Institute, she was Head of the Department for Legalization of Buildings and Inspection Affairs at the municipality of Savski Venac in Belgrade. At that time, the president of this municipality was Irena Vujović.

Shortly after Vujović was appointed Minister of Environmental Protection, Šibalić became the Acting Director of the Institute for Nature Conservation of Serbia.

In practice, when the Director of the Institute receives a version of the conditions from the expert services, they review it and either approve it or request corrections. The Director also ultimately signs the decision issuing the conditions.

This time, on August 21, instead of providing suggestions, Šibalić sent her own version of the conditions.

Experts noticed that the contents of the two documents significantly differed. Among others, biologist Ivan Medenica noted that “key conditions for biodiversity protection were not incorporated.”

Nenad Sekulić, Head of the Department for Biodiversity, Ecological Network, and Sustainable Development, pointed out in his comments that a paragraph was deleted – one mentioning that the area encompasses habitats of strictly protected and protected wild species of plants and animals, as well as habitats that are a priority for protection.

Over 60 species of invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals were omitted, according to Sekulić’s comments.

He also suggested that a baseline biodiversity condition should be defined – an overview of the plants and animals present at that moment in the area, which would later be used to monitor whether the project is contributing to the disappearance of species.

However, all these comments were in vain, as by that time the Acting Director had already issued the decision with her own version of the conditions. She made no changes, not even to the typographical errors pointed out by Sekulić.

Department heads dissociated themselves from the conditions

The Institute for Nature Conservation refused to provide us with documentation for months, and when they finally allowed us to review it, they hid part of it (more on this in the sidebar).

For example, they did not provide the official notes prepared by two of the three department heads – Nenad Sekulić, Head of the Department for Biodiversity, Ecological Network, and Sustainable Development, and Nataša Sarić, Head of the Department for Geodiversity.

In his official note, Sekulić wrote that he had prepared it “with the aim of pointing out the potential consequences of adopting the subject decision, made in a manner and through a procedure that has not been applied or seen before at the Institute for Nature Conservation of Serbia.” He also stated that the decision issued by the Institute was “prepared in secrecy and just as secretly dispatched” without prior consideration of expert opinions from multiple departments and sections of the Institute.

Sekulić also submitted supporting documents with his official note, which were not in the file that was made available to CINS’s journalist.

Head of the Department for Geodiversity Nataša Sarić also stated in her official note that she disagreed with the disputed decision because it was not in line with the conditions defined by the experts in her department.

The Institute for Nature Conservation of Serbia responded via email, stating that they could not facilitate interviews either with their employees or with the Acting Director while the procedure we initiated before the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance was ongoing.