Taking Our Peace Mounting Protests Over Europe's Lithium Mines

Filipe Gomes had been craving fresh air and quiet when he and his partner quit the chaos of London's catering industry for the hills of Covas do Barroso, the sleepy Portuguese farming village where he was raised.

- Ajit Niranjan

Filipe Gomes had been craving fresh air and quiet when he and his partner quit the chaos of London's catering industry for the hills of Covas do Barroso, the sleepy Portuguese farming village where he was raised. But his rural idyll has been disturbed by miners drilling boreholes as they push to dig four vast lithium mines right beside the village. The prospecting has sparked furious resistance from locals who fear the mines will foul the soil, drain the water and fill the air with the rumble of heavy lorries.

"They are destroying everything," said Gomes, who runs the only cafe in the village with his partner. "They are taking our peace."

Covas do Barroso is among the first villages caught in the firing line of Europe's efforts to green its economy. As the continent weans itself off fossil fuels that poison the air and heat the planet, it is ramping up demand for lithium to build batteries that can run electric cars and balance renewable-heavy power grids.

But across Europe's peripheries, people living near lithium deposits do not seem convinced that mines will bring good jobs and are unmoved by pleas to stop a bigger ecological threat. Attempts to push projects through in the face of local resistance have been met with cries of "colonialism".

In Serbia, broad sectors of society have taken to the streets over the last year to protest a lithium mine planned for the Jadar valley. In France, a lithium mine planned beneath a kaolin quarry in Allier has alarmed activists and divided locals. In Covas do Barroso, in northern Portugal, locals say their village - at the heart of a heritage farming region recognised by the United Nations - has been turned into a "sacrifice zone".