Presentation short abstract

Lithium mining in Portugal and Serbia reveals how the green transition generates new sacrifice zones in the Global North. Analysing evolving conflicts, actor constellations and complex complicities, we show how extractive pressures reshape socio-ecological futures in politically volatile contexts.

Presentation long abstract

This paper analyses lithium extraction in Portugal and Serbia as emblematic cases of how the European green transition generates new sacrifice zones within the Global North. Drawing on political ecology and the panel’s focus on environmental injustice as complex complicity, we examine how EU strategic ambitions, national policy frameworks and corporate interventions converge to reshape peripheral territories through extractive interests.

Building on our comparative proposal, we trace the socio-ecological conflicts surrounding the Mina do Barroso (Portugal) and Jadar (Serbia) projects, where communities confront environmental risks, threats to agricultural livelihoods and top-down licensing procedures. Despite these parallels, the political trajectories diverge: mass mobilisation in Serbia led to the temporary withdrawal of Rio Tinto’s permits, yet the project remains latent and vulnerable to reactivation; in Portugal, recent strategic designation at EU level has revitalised the Barroso project despite ongoing legal challenges and local resistance. These dynamics underscore the importance of analysing conflicts in real time, as current political decisions will decisively shape the future of these territories.

By analysing actor constellations, power relations and ambiguous local positions influenced by economic dependency and institutional distrust, this contribution shows how the so-called green transition reconfigures it within Europe. The comparative approach advances debates in Political Ecology by demonstrating how decarbonisation agendas can reproduce inequalities, generate complex forms of complicity and expand extractive frontiers under the banner of sustainability, also in the Global North.