Bosnia journals 2024,
Journal #2:
A visit to Pecka, Vitorog, and Medna: biologists on the front line; the scandal
of coal
2024 Journal
index
Introduction: Meeting the environmental activists
Journal 1:
Ozren is Not for Sale
Journal 2: Pecka
and vicinity: biologists on front line; scandal of coal
Journal 3: The
Pliva River, from the headwaters to the Jajce waterfalls
Journal 4: Coal in Ugljevik; Lithium on Mt. Majevica
Journal 5: With Hajrija Čobo at Mehorić;
Visiting Robert Oroz in Fojnica
Previous journals and articles
To contact Peter in response to these reports or any
of his articles,
click here.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina has zinc, lead, gold, lithium, cobalt, nickel,
antimony, barite, boron, and still more. But this is not to say that
Bosnia is a rich country. All these riches can turn out to be a
curse.
After I spent a few days on Mt. Ozren, Davor Šupuković arranged a
ride for me across the north of Bosnia to a visitor center in a
sparsely populated village called Pecka. An old elementary school,
no longer in demand, is located there, refurbished by Mr. Boro Marić
with support of an umbrella organization,
Greenways.
The center's web site describes the goal: "The preservation of
natural resources and defense of biodiversity in designated areas,
and the establishment of new models of sustainable development."
Mr. Marić told me, "We started this visitor center 10 years ago. We
are working out of inat
[spite],
to show how much better it is to develop tourism than hydro-electric
dams. The dams are created through deceit and they result in
environmental destruction. There is a dam near here with pipes that
are nearly three meters in diameter. But there is not enough water
to operate the dam all year; it only works during the winter. One
should contrast the dams with the effect of our center, which is a
pilot project."
The Pecka Visitor Center is an attempt to revive the life and the
economy of an area whose population has been significantly depleted;
Mr. Marić told me that some decades ago, there were 2,500 residents
of Pecka, but that over the years, they had emigrated to Dalmatia
and Vojvodina. Today, the official population is 75.
If you look at a map of Bosnia-Herzegovina, not far from the center
of the country you'll see the town of Mrkonjić Grad, between Jajce
and Ključ. Due south of Mrkonjić is Šipovo, and Pecka Visitor Center
(in the settlement of Gornja Pecka) is to the northwest of Šipovo.
The four towns, Mrkonjić Grad, Jajce, Šipovo, and Pecka, form a
diamond shape, with all of them except for Jajce located in the
Republika Srpska.
It was opportune for me to arrive at Pecka just as a group of young
biologists from all around Bosnia convened there to study
biodiversity in unspoiled surroundings. For a moment I wondered why
Davor had sent me there, but he knew what I needed. The region is
subject to many of the threats to nature that profiteers and
international industrialists can pose. With its ore-laden mountains
and its many streams and rivers, the area is ripe for exploitation
and despoliation from coal mining, lithium and gold prospecting, and
the destruction of biodiversity that results from the construction
of hydroelectric dams.
The biologists consider that their research is the advance work in
preparing a case for the preservation of the biodiversity and
natural beauty of the lands which are the heritage of every Bosnian.
A catalogue of the rare and sometimes newly discovered species in a
given territory is a crucial tool in the defense of a resource that
should be protected forever. The biologists are on the front line,
in the Mrkonjić-Šipovo region, in Ozren, and throughout
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
On my first day in the area, I rode up the slopes of Mt. Vitorog,
south of Šipovo on the inter-entity boundary, with the entire group
of biologists. After driving carefully up through forested hills
along a steep and unpaved road, we stopped at a viewpoint where we
could look down on the headwaters of the Pliva River. There is a
song about this river that, for some people, serves as Bosnia's
national anthem. It is a song of longing, a love song for the
pastoral landscape of the region.
The headwaters of the Pliva River, viewed from
Mt. Vitorog
From the viewpoint we looked down on the village of Dragnić and the
streams flowing through the valley below. Some of the biologists had
already started their work, noting a large praying mantis situated
in the rocks on the side of a hill. Some of them were looking for
bats, others for insects, plants, reptiles, and amphibians. One of
them, Dejan,
looked for scorpions; he told me that there are 15 species in the
area, and that their sting is weaker than that of a bee.
I walked into the woods with Dragan and Rade. The told me that there
are wolves, boar, deer, and bobcats in the area. We spotted a large
bird, the šumska kokoš, or grouse, that resembles a turkey.
There are otter in the rivers, going after the river crabs.
Our task was to find and identify mushrooms. I never saw so many
mushrooms, and so many varieties, in my life. The two of them picked
mushrooms and photographed each one from several angles.
The next morning I had an early appointment, and I was in the
cafeteria at 7:00 a.m. Rade was already there, alone, poring over
his mycology book. Rade was a self-educated, expert mycologist. I
found out later that he had missed going to college because he was
of military age when the war broke out in 1992. He made up for this
afterwards by studying on his own, focusing on his passion. He could
identify all the mushrooms by their Latin names. He attended
mycology conferences in Belgrade, and astonished the learned biology
professors there with his knowledge.
That day in the forest, we found and identified 97 species of
mushrooms. I was told that there are over 1,700 different species in
the region. Many of them are specific to the trees that they grow
near.
The dangers threatening the rivers and pastures of the region were
on the minds of the biologists that day. One of them explained to me
that they don't know exactly what threats await the natural setting,
but that there could be bad news at any moment. That is how new dams
and new mines are announced: with the sound of a bulldozer. There
are several dams planned in these municipalities on the headwaters
of the Pliva and the Sana, and there is resistance to them, as they
destroy the fish and wildlife habitats around them without
restraint.
Nataša
Mazalica, a biologist who was coordinating the week's research, told
me that a mini-dam was built at Glavica, and it has undermined the
stability of the river's course and endangered a nearby bridge. One
species of fish, "lipljen," has vanished. She pointed out that no
fish ladder had been incorporated into the design of the dam, and
that there were no inspections undertaken. She commented, "People
don't see this, and so they don't think of it as any kind of
problem. They think that nature is in great shape, but practically
every waterway is devastated."
"Only the Neretva has 30 kilometers of unspoiled river," she
continued, "The rest is kaput, finished."
Biologists and environmental activists consistently tell me that
Bosnia has a pitifully small amount of protected natural areas for
conservation compared to the rest of Europe, measuring out at under
4%, as compared with an international level near 18%, as reported by
oneearth.org.
Tradingeconomics.com
corroborates this figure, while it
also reports,
for example, that Austria's protected land amounts to 29.5% of the
country.
*
The day after the mushroom hunt, Sergej Milanović, a forestry
engineer and member of the Mrkonjić Grad municipal assembly, came
early to Pecka to take me to visit a coal mine. He had publicly
campaigned against the mine due to pollution it caused in nearby
streams and rivers.
Milanović had made local news in June of 2023 when he brought a
pickaxe to a municipal assembly meeting. He brought it wrapped in
gift paper, hoping to present it to Mayor
Dragan Vođević. This bit of theater on
Milanović's part was prompted by what he considered underhanded
maneuvering by the mayor, who was angling to push through approval
of a mining permit.
I asked Mr. Milanović for details about the problem. He told me that
Mrkonjić Grad had promised a permit to Lykos Balkan Metals—the same
company that is prospecting on Mt. Ozren—to explore for lithium near
Jezero. This project would affect three adjacent municipalities:
Jezero, Šipovo, and Mrkonjić Grad. Milanović said, "I found out that
there had been no discussion: the mayor was ready to provide Lykos
with the permit without even consulting the public."
The municipal assembly of Mrkonjić Grad was being asked to vote on
the measure without having the chance to review it in advance.
Milanović asserted that the mayor and his party, constituting the
majority in the body, "had not organized a public discussion about
geological research; rather, they had simply prepared an assembly
decision about geological research, and the assembly members did not
know what they were supposed to vote about."
He continued, "So I brought the pickaxe to the meeting."
Mr. Milanović attempted to present the gift-wrapped pickaxe to Mayor
Vođević, a medical internist by profession, saying, "You are not a
doctor anymore. You can be a miner now; take this and go to work."
The assembly majority, all members of the SNSD party of Milorad
Dodik, expressed their objection to Milanović's action not only by
walking out of the assembly session, but by calling the police on
him. The police, however, declined to intervene, saying that there
had been no threat and no violence.
The permit decision soon went through, and Milanović told me, "Lykos
has been drilling down 200 meters. The institutions have no ability
to control the exploration. The company could find one mineral, but
say something else." And in fact, in addition to lithium, Lykos has
reported finding gold in the area.
The wall of mud tailings from the coal mine above
Medna village
We drove north from Pecka, passed through the village of Baraći, and
arrived at the out-of-the-way village of Medna. A few houses and a
solid Orthodox monastery graced the valley under the surrounding
mountains. To the east we saw a wall of mud dozens of meters high,
reaching up one of the hills. It was our job to climb up that slope
to arrive at a coal mine that was the source of all the mud.
I had not known what to expect; I imagined that were going to
descend into a mineshaft. After we parked, Mr. Milanović pulled out
a pair of knee-high rubber boots for me.
We started up the hill of mud. I was carrying my notebook and a pen,
and I had my phone out so that I could take photos. I did not make
good progress; I noticed my feet, and then my legs, sinking down
into the mud. It got worse. As I would pull one leg out of the mud,
the other leg would go in deeper—and the leg that I was pulling out
would leave its boot behind, sunk all the way to the top.
It was a dilemma. At one point I managed to extract both of my legs,
with boots on, but the terrain was steep and slippery. I toppled
over, and became one with the mud. My phone went one way, and my
notebook, the other. There was mud on my clothes and on the phone. I
noticed my glasses had flown off, but they weren't far away.
I pulled myself together and continued up the slope, trying to
follow in Milanović's footsteps. He offered some helpful advice,
saying, "How much do you weigh?" (not that much), and "You don't
really have a good walking technique for this situation." An
anti-gravity device would surely have helped my technique.
After a while, the going got easier as the
ground became more solid.
That slope of mud and then firmer soil resembled a moonscape with a
few hardy weeds growing out of it. We reached what turned out to be
the crest of an open-pit coal mine about a hundred meters above the
village. There, under the continuing slopes and pinewoods, stretched
an open expanse of dirt about 12 hectares (30 acres) in size, cut
out of the hillside.
It was an off-day at the Medna coal mine, with no workers present,
and a lone earth mover standing still at one edge of the site. The
ground was uneven, with small hills here and there. We tarried a
while, surveying the ugly pit that the miners had gouged out of the
hillside.
Several people who have talked to me about coal mining in
Bosnia-Herzegovina have tried to address the question of who is
supporting the extraction, and where the coal ends up. The answers
are to some extent available, garnished by a dose of conjecture
bordering on rumor.
More than half—some
analysts
estimate up to 70%—of Bosnia's energy supply comes from
five coal-burning thermal plants,
with most of the remainder supplied by large hydroelectric dams.
These plants are supplied by Bosnia's
dozen-odd active coal mines
(see map
here).
Of these,
ten are state-owned;
the rest are owned by private companies. The International Trade
Administration
estimates
that Bosnia holds at least two billion metric tons of accessible
coal. Bosnia burns about
13 million tons
of coal a year. It is also the region's only exporter of electrical
power.
Bosnia exports not only electricity generated by coal, but coal
itself. And much of that coal comes from illicit mines that have not
received permits, or whose permitting process has taken place via
crony-operated manipulation, as is the case with the mine at Medna
village. Similar mines have been opened under "controversial"
circumstances near Prijedor.
Much of the exported coal is trucked to neighboring Serbia. One
activist told me, "There is a proliferation of new, privately owned
coal mines by Serbian criminals. There is no customs control when
they cross the border into Serbia." Details about such "criminals"
are, understandably, elusive.
More details are available about who operates some of the dodgy
mines in Medna and Prijedor. Sergej Milanović told me, "Srđan
Klječanin from Teslić controls the exploitation. It's his machines.
He opens the mines, sets up everything. The concessions are owned by
people who do not have any capital: fictitious companies. They are
legally liable, but nothing can happen to them. There is no
accountability. There are protective laws but they are not
implemented. This dynamic is above the law."
Milanović was unable to provide information about who received the
coal on the Serbian end, and who ordered it or set up that side of
the operation. On the other hand, Croatian investigative reporter
Domagoj Margetić seems very confident of his information about the
complete chain of the transaction from the points of evironmental
ransacking at humble Medna, and sites near Prijedor including
Bistrica and Bukova Kosa mines, all the way to Serbia.
In August of 2024, Margetić blasted the mayor of Prijedor along with
several of his functionaries, as well as Republika Srpska Minister
of Energy and Mining Petar Đokić and his deputy minister, Esad
Salčin. He stated that they and the likes of them do not see any
problem with the poisoning of the atmosphere around the mines. It's
important to note here that Bosnia's brown coal and lignite is of
the worst variety of coal—a fuel that should be phased out in any
case. That coal provides the least energy, has the highest moisture
content, and the greatest amount of sulphur, which goes directly
into the air around the thermo-electric plants where it is burned.
Margetić writes
about the mines near Prijedor, which have spontaneously caught on
fire; the overloaded trucks that spread toxic dust through the
nearby villages while destroying the roads they travel on; and the
runoff from the mines that turns the nearby streams and lakes red
with oxidized sulphur. Referring to the above-mentioned officials,
he states, "With documents, they conceal this pollution by the
illegal mines so that
[President of Serbia] Aleksandar Vučić and [RS President] Milorad
Dodik, Zvonko Veselinović, and Srđan Klječanin can continue
smuggling illegal coal to Serbia. Thus Vučić and Dodik earn money by
poisoning Serbs in the Republika Srpska and through criminal
mining."
Margetić here discussed the problem at Prijedor, but he refers to
the same chain of environmental criminality that Mr. Milanović
mentioned to me, starting with Klječanin. But Milanović had not
named Veselinović, who is a "controversial businessman" (read: "mafioso")
operating in the Serb-populated part of Kosovo and elsewhere in
Serbia, all the way up to Novi Sad.
Sanctions Watch
states that
Veselinović is known for "illicit trafficking of goods, money,
narcotics, and weapons between Kosovo and Serbia." He is close to
the Serbian provocateurs who have mounted armed incursions from
Serbia into Kosovo and attacked Kosovo police with firearms. In late
2021 the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control
placed Veselinović under sanctions and
called him
"one of Kosovo's most notorious corrupt figures."
The above information illustrates, in very rough lines, the chain of
corruption that facilitates profiteering via environmental pillage
throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina and, if we want to look further,
throughout much of the world: corrupt local officials and
"businessmen" make deals with international extractors, without
concern for the inhabitants, the biodiversity, or the natural beauty
of their own lands. In the present case, relatively small operators
from nearby Serbia are involved, but in other operations, there much
larger companies implicated.
Coal mine tailings polluting the stream that
flows through Medna village
Sergej Milanović and I headed back down the hill of soil and mud,
along a route that was relatively free of the quicksand-like mud. On
the way down he showed me a creek flowing off the mountainside,
through the mud. It was clouded, a milky color. He showed me another
creek running into it, with clear water. The polluted stream,
Grabovac, flows through the village into the Medljanka River, which
soon joins the headwaters of the Sana, one of Bosnia's major rivers.
Milanović told me that the water in the Grabovac used to be
"perfectly
good drinking water, but it is now poisoned. It is fifth-class water
now: you can't wash your car with it."
Milanović had taken samples of the water to demonstrate the problem,
and the municipality ordered an inspection. The inspectors came and
announced that they did not detect any discoloration in the water.
Milanović told me, "I spoke about this in public, but there was no
reaction. The local authorities behaved as if they were not
responsible. We have done some campaigning, but it has not helped
much, nor really raised awareness."
I asked if the villagers of Medna had complained about the water
degradation, and he answered, "Yes, but they are afraid of the
criminal group operating the mine." And I asked if there was one
political party making all the relevant decisions on this issue. He
responded, "Nema veze, it doesn't matter. They are all
involved."
There has recently been movement regarding the mines near Prijedor.
Villagers in Bistrica had tried to block the road to the mining site
in mid-2023, objecting to the damage that preparation of a new mine
was already doing to people's private lands. During that summer the
municipal councilors of Prijedor agreed that mining activities
should be stopped until all relevant documentation could be
examined. However, Mayor Slobodan Javor stated that Prijedor was not
in possession of any documentation, and that the RS Ministry of
Energy and Mining had issued the permits for these mines. Petar
Đokić had gone over the heads of the villagers in Prijedor
municipality.
In July of the same year, the Republika Srpska National Assembly (NSRS)
passed a
new law seriously curtailing citizens' power to resist the
assault by mining companies. The law removed the requirement for
mining companies to consult with and receive consent from local
residents and political officials in areas where prospecting is to
take place. In addition, it greatly increased the amount of ore that
can be extracted in "preliminary exploration" processes. The
previous law allowed 200 cubic meters of raw material to be removed,
while the new law permits up to 2,000 tons of metal ores and 500
tons of non-metal ores to be taken out. This turns "exploration"
into full-fledged extraction.
The mine at Bukova Kosa is operated by the Teslić-based company Drvo-Export,
owned by Srđan Klječanin. The Banja Luka-based Center for the
Environment (Centar za Životnu Sredinu), together with about 30
residents of the village, filed a lawsuit to put a stop to the
mining at Bukova Kosa because the work had been initiated in early
2023 without a permit, and the permit was not issued until eight
months later, in January of 2024.
A
news report noted that the mining had begun without even
undertaking an environmental impact study. An opposition member of
the Republika Srpska Parliament grilled Bojan Vipotnik, RS Minister
of Spatial Planning, Construction, and Ecology. She asked, "How is
it possible that the Ministry allowed the project holder to extract
coal without an environmental impact study? Secondly, how do you
plan to restore everything to its original state?"
The Minister finessed the first question, saying that "it was
possible that the Ministry had issued the environmental permit." On
the second question, he said, "I would respond with a
counter-question—why should everything have to be restored to its
original state?”
What more does one need, to illustrate the attitude of those who are
eager to sell off their irreplaceable environment?
And as it happened, in late October of 2024 the District Court of
Banja Luka annulled the permit issued by Vipotnik's Ministry.
The Ministry vowed to appeal.