Introduction

In the last 3 years, the European Union (EU) has taken important climate action, dedicating considerable resources to that end. In 2019, the European Commission (EC) presented the European Green Deal (EGD), a plan designed to mitigate the existential threats of climate change by transforming the European economy into a climate-friendly one. One of the EGD’s key points is ensuring a just and inclusive transition to a low-carbon economy (EC 2019). At the initial stage, EU governments agreed to endow EGD with a massive 1 trillion euros budget. Following the outburst of the COVID-19 pandemic, EU member states agreed in 2020 to earmark almost a third of their 1.8 trillion euro coronavirus recovery package and 2021–2027 budget for fighting climate change (CLEW n.d.). And, in 2022, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EC announced a new plan (REPowerEU) that would dedicate more resources for making Europe independent from Russian fossil fuels well before 2030, with EC President Ursula von der Leyen emphasizing the role of accelerating “the green energy transition” in order to achieve that aim (EC 2022).

However, a growing number of environmental conflicts across the world point to challenges and contradictions that arise as a result of ambitious European climate policies. Notably, the EU’s policy plans risk generating a heavy increase in mining of so-called ‘critical minerals’ which are necessary for renewables technologies, both overseas and within Europe. Related to that, EU policy-makers, industries, and investors are pointing out that a transition towards a carbon–neutral continent will be accompanied by an enormous increase of battery demand, largely driven by the shift in the transportation sector towards electromobility (EC 2018). Securing access to critical materials implies the development of large-scale mining projects not only abroad but also across Europe, where growing opposition against critical mineral mining has emerged with civil society. A notable recent example involves the acute social conflict around a lithium mining project in Serbia’s Jadar valley that led to its cancellation (De Launey 2022). Those conflicts raise uncomfortable questions about the role and treatment of regions and populations that act as providers of infrastructure necessary for achieving a just low-carbon transition, and about how far extractive projects help address the root causes of climate change.

The term ‘sacrifice zones’ refers to places whose ecology has been acutely deteriorated for the ‘greater good’ or a ‘higher’ social purpose. Sacrifice zones are generated by an interplay of political and economic forces that tend to appear in areas inhabited by marginalized populations (Lerner 2010). With Green Deal strategies developing more intensively in the global North since 2019, the term green sacrifice zone (GSZ) has been coined to conceptualize territories directly affected by measures that are meant to deliver a transition towards green economies and carbon-neutrality (Zografos and Robbins 2020). The concept and term are relatively novel, and more research is needed to identify what interplays and configurations of different factors lead to the generation of GSZs in the context of just transition. Particularly, the politics of attempting and resisting the generation of green sacrifice in Europe are key for understanding the phenomenon. Recently, research has emerged that looks at some aspects of this issue through studies of conflicts arising from implementing just low-carbon transition in Europe, which are on the increase with the advance of the EGD. Our paper adds to that work to help advance understanding of the politics of green sacrifice.

We ask the following question: How is green sacrifice produced through green governance reconfigurations in the context of advancing large-scale mining operations for just transition in a European context? We employ the term ‘green governance’ used in political ecology to designate analysis of environmental issues that focus on questions of power and forms of rule/governance, posing that “[p]ower over nature and society is exercised … not only through complex forms of social control and hegemony but also normative ideology, and governmentality” (Peet et al. 2010, p. 31). To answer our question, we explore the politics of green sacrifice making, focusing on lithium mining. Looking at a case of lithium mining conflict in rural northern Portugal, we analyze economic aspects of lithium mining and how they relate to attempts to create a GSZ through institutional changes that facilitate capital accumulation. We complement this analytical focus with a study of the politics of GSZ making, which teases out discourses that are mobilized in efforts to make possible and resist the production of green sacrifice. Our paper contributes to an emerging body of critical literature on the social and ecological costs of the EU’s just low-carbon transition, a strategy that aims at achieving a socially and environmentally just response to the climate crisis, which has nevertheless been criticized as permeated with its own injustices.

Lithium mining for low-carbon transitions and the politics of green sacrifice in Europe

Critical research on low-carbon transition establishes that many socio-environmental inequalities that characterize fossil fuel industries are also generated by green industries (Brock et al. 2021). This happens in the process of generating the infrastructure necessary for a low-carbon transition, for example, through mining activity to obtain materials necessary for green technologies, and when installing large-scale solar and wind farms. This line of work shows that despite claims of ‘greenness and cleanliness’, renewable energy projects rely heavily on extractive operations, green grabbing, and environmental degradation (Bonds and Downey 2012; Brock et al. 2021), which are necessary for sustaining and developing an industrial growth model (Brock et al. 2021).

Patterns of marginalization characterize the building of low-carbon transition infrastructure in Europe. For example, the expansion of solar energy in Germany has been connected to the dispossession of lands from politically and economically marginalized communities, widening inequalities and ecological waste and pollution-practices that strongly resemble ‘the old ways’ of fossil fuel industries (Brock et al. 2021). Divides between rural and urban areas are also important for understanding the uneven character of energy transitions. In South Wales, low-carbon transitions develop within existing uneven power relations and risk repeating prior patterns of resource peripheralization and continued marginalization for socially, politically, and economically disadvantaged peripheries (O’Sullivan et al. 2020). Some even observe the return of a new form of extractivism in Europe, which takes place in rural areas whose future and long-term development could be profoundly harmed by mining industry activities (del Mármol and Vaccaro 2020).

Meanwhile, criticisms (Marin 2020) have been raised towards the EC’s action plan for critical raw materials (EC 2020b), which seeks to produce a radical turn towards ‘insourcing’ critical minerals for the operation of the EU’s economy from mines within Europe, to reduce its dependence on imports. Notably, that action plan added lithium for the first time to the EC’s list of critical minerals, highlighting its strategic importance for Europe’s low-carbon transition; the expected dramatic growth in European demand for lithium (18-fold by 2030, and 60-fold by 2050); the EU’s absolute (100%) current dependence on imports for lithium; and the EC’s expectation that already mobilized public and private investment would lead to 80% of Europe’s lithium demand being supplied from European sources as early as 2025 (EC 2020a). In the political economy of lithium, corporate and state interest are highly aligned. Elite alliances between Global North governments, mining corporations, and car companies promote the insourcing of lithium to Europe and the US through establishing a growing ‘security-sustainability nexus’ which connects political threats to the supply of critical minerals for Global North economies (e.g., China’s alleged dominance over battery supply chains; war in Ukraine) to the environmental credentials of Global North mining (Noever Castelos 2023; Riofrancos 2023).

Such dynamics highlight how Green New Deal plans could put severe pressure on lands held by marginalized communities and reshape their ecologies into GSZs. This refers to spaces where the logic of sacrificing a certain ecology for the sake of a superior (e.g., national, or planetary) cause expands to embrace places and populations affected by the sourcing, transportation, installation, and operation of solutions for powering low-carbon transitions (Zografos and Robbins 2020).

When it comes to the study of the politics of low-carbon transition, representation and the ways in which it connects to climate action are key for understanding how the logic of sacrifice is politically legitimized by corporate-state alliances. Klein (2016) convincingly argues that the lack of effort by states to lower emissions and tackle the current climate crisis cannot be understood without reference to the concept of ‘othering’ and the political work that it does. According to Klein, fully knowing the dangers that climate change brings to marginalized groups, but remaining inactive, is made possible by a system of institutions that values certain lives less than others. Klein explains that capitalist economies in the global North are built on power systems of institutional racism and colonialism, which can only exist through propagating the logic that ‘the other’ does not have the same rights or humanity as the one making the distinction. This othering logic enables the many instances of slow violence intimately linked to the current climate crisis (Klein 2016; Nixon 2011).

However, othering is not restricted to fossil fuels, policy inaction, and exclusion; it also connects to inclusion, and shapes solutions to the climate crisis and the governing of energy transitions. Next to the politics of exclusion underlined by Klein, othering in the context of governing climate change also manifests itself in a politics of inclusion, whereby populations and territories containing resources necessary for capital to provide ‘green solutions’ to the climate threat are casted as ‘in need of improvement’ (Andreucci and Zografos 2022), and in the case of the global North, in need of achieving catching-up development to escape semi-peripheralization (Noever Castelos 2023). Framing regions and populations as marginal, impoverished, and in need of improvement via development serves to legitimize, justify or invisibilize the violence inherent in the corporate-state complex’s mining activity. Recent studies in western Spain (Noever Castelos 2023) and northern Portugal (Alena Saleth and Varov 2023) indicate how such framings may also appear in energy transitions in the Global North to legitimize lithium mining activity, but also socio-ecological violence.

For example, in our study area, Dunlap and Riquito (2023) have observed the operation of what they term as social warfare tactics of coercive influence, infrastructural colonization, and social war, side by side with soft technologies of social pacification. On the one hand, the action of governmental institutions enables land grabbing, while on the other hand corporate attempts to engineer social consent mobilize public relations campaigns to “win the hearts and minds of a disagreeable population” (ibid, p. 17), through a mix of practices such as appropriating scientific research, resorting to threats of land expropriation, and undermining and disabling anti-mining opposition. Other recent studies in the area point out that lithium mining advances extractivism (Acosta 2013; Gudynas 2021) through the misrepresentation of local communities by media, government institutions and corporations, and the dismissal or neglect of their concerns about injustices and impacts of mining on agricultural traditions and ecotourism, as well as their fears over population displacement (Canelas and Carvalho 2023).

Such practices suggest the existence of serious democracy deficits in the process of advancing low-carbon transition. One can also conclude this by considering the experience of lithium mining opponents being disregarded in their concerns and demands, and of being restricted in their ability to participate in decision-making (Alena Saleth and Varov 2023). Although local opposition acknowledges the urgency of the energy transition, it questions socio-technical responses and their socio-economic foundations that are dominated by centralized political and economic powers (Canelas and Carvalho 2023). As such, ‘green mining’ and the narratives of economic development and its consonance with limited ecological harm are met with distrust. Lithium mining thus ends up highlighting tensions between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ populations as it is seen to unequally distribute the goods and the bads between local community and the corporate and state elites, thereby increasing pre-existing inequalities (Canelas and Carvalho 2023). In that context, local reactions mobilize a sort of ‘defensive resistance’ by trying to act upon the future through connecting issues across different scales and drawing on local symbols to signpost differences from dominant ideas that connect development to extraction (Alena Saleth and Varov 2023).

The study of the lithium mining conflict in northern Portugal points out that plans of expanding lithium extraction in the name of the green economy in European sites give rise to GSZs (Alena Saleth and Varov 2023) and that the costs of catching-up through green development are shifted to people and ecologies that inhabit those GSZs (Canelas and Carvalho 2023). This makes northern Portugal particularly well suited as a study site for deepening understanding on the politics of green sacrifice.

Materials and methods

To examine the politics of green sacrifice, we conducted a case study of a prospective mining project in the Barroso region in northern Portugal. Our case is the “Mina do Barroso” (Barroso Mine), a large-scale open-pit lithium mine that receives much endorsement from state and corporate actors, but substantial opposition from the local community concerned by its potential ecological consequences. At the moment of data collection, the project had yet to be granted all necessary licenses, which is why our analytical focus is on the making of green sacrifice rather than on GSZs per se. The Barroso mine is still in the licensing process with the Portuguese Environmental Agency (APA), which in 2023 granted it a positive Environmental Impact Assessment and conditional approval.

Using a case study research design (Yin 2008), we collected evidence from different sources. This is mostly a desk-based study, which has collected data by systematically reviewing a large number of secondary sources and complemented this with a small number (six) of selected, in-depth interviews (including with two local and two national-level activists) to help us deepen our understanding of the case study as well as check and refine our analyses. This approach was deemed compatible with our objective, which was to study green governance and the politics of green sacrifice making through discourse mobilized to legitimize transition mineral (lithium) mining, and institutional framework changes. As recommended by Yin (2008), the research design was based on the use of multiple sources of data collection and therefore did not solely rely on interviews. However, we recognize that the small number of interviews could restrict some of our claims, particularly as concerns local reactions to mining.

We extensively studied policy documents, news articles, proceedings from mining conferences, legislation and demographic data, as well as other media coverage of the conflict, and public announcements from different actors. Key data sources included a public complaint by UCDB against a national policy proposal, a manifesto signed by anti-mining movements across Portugal, and public statements and information about the mining project available by the company. We also reviewed reports on ‘green mining’ and resource consumption by the European Environmental Bureau, Friends of the Earth, ANP and WWF, Yes to Life No to Mining, as well as national Portuguese and EU policy documents, and a European Conference on Green Mining in Lisbon in May 2021.

We complemented these data with interviews of carefully selected stakeholders and experts, chosen for their knowledge of the region and the conflict, their first-hand experience of institutional processes that have been unfolding since exploration for lithium mining started in Portugal, and their knowledge both of the Barroso case and other mining exploration conflicts in northern Portugal. Interviews were conducted online due to COVID-19 restrictions at the time. A purposive sample was pursued (through snowball sampling) with the aim of registering diverse viewpoints and interests, interviewing: local actors involved in the Barroso conflict, including one farmer-activist and one researcher; activists engaged in the resistance against lithium mining in other parts of northern Portugal; a non-Portuguese investigative journalist covering the Portuguese mining controversy; and a policy manager of the European Battery Alliance (EBA), who supports the mining project. Attempts to conduct an interview with Savannah Resources led to no reply by the company.

Making and opposing Green Sacrifice in Barroso

The Barroso region in northern Portugal is an area recognized for its sustainable agricultural practices and heritage: Barroso was among the first European sites to be classified as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (FAO n.d.). The mountainous area consists of a number of civil parishes and is rich in agriculture and biodiversity. The rocks in the area contain spodumene minerals, which contains lithium, which is highly valued for its use in producing lithium-ion batteries.

In 2017, Savannah Resources, a multi-commodity mineral resource development company based in London, was granted a mining lease for a prospective mine development in Barroso. Media reports mention that the majority of residents in Covas do Barroso are opposed to lithium mining exploration (Carter 2021). According to local opposition, mining incurs pollution risks and threatens their rights to the landscape. The local movement UDCB has mobilized against the mining project through petitions, protests, and digital campaigning via Facebook with the slogan: “Não à Mina, Sim à Vida” (No to the mine, yes to life). The movement cooperates with other grassroots groups across Portugal and internationally (Yes to Life, No to Mining; Zapatistas), and has signed a Portuguese civil society manifesto which contests lithium exploration and extraction in the country (Associação Montalegre Com Vida et al. 2020) (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Source: MiningWatch Portugal

A map of municipalities in northern and central Portugal where lithium mining exploration or extraction has been requested, attributed, and foreseen between 2016 and 2023.

Full size image

Re-arranging institutions for green sacrifice in northern Portugal

Demand for lithium-ion batteries is directly related to demand for electric vehicles (EV) and for storage of wind and solar powered energy. EV demand is continuously on the rise and lithium prices have been rising steeply with the price almost tripling in 2021 (Financial Times 2021). Market analysts enthusiastically predict an incoming ‘global battery arms race’ (Moores 2021), centered around the control of the so-called ‘white gold’. The lithium mining industry gains significantly from state actors’ and manufacturers’ desire to in-source lithium supplies, as expectations of a global surge in demand for lithium-ion batteries make available considerable sums of public funding. Portugal is interesting to foreign investors as it holds few restrictions against foreign investors, there is political stability, and it has a relatively clear legal framework on mining (Aroso and Magalhães 2021).

Regulatory reforms and institutional arrangements are key for attracting companies for mineral extraction (de los Reyes 2017; Gudynas 2021). From the mid-2010s, lithium mining in Portugal has been endorsed by the national government. In 2016, a working group was established to study Portuguese lithium manufacturing. A new legal framework for the exploitation of geological resources was introduced in 2015 and eventually regulated in 2021, helping to open the door to new mining tenders and projects. The new legislation replaced mining legislation from the 1990s and stipulates the use of mineral deposits based on three conditions: environmental sustainability standards and economic valorization, public information and participation, and a distribution of exploitation benefits (see also Table 1). In 2018, policy concerning mining was assigned to the Environment and Climate Action Ministry, which also supervises the General Directorate for Energy and Geology (DGEG). That means that the same ministry has the task of managing the mining industry, while simultaneously managing climate action and the environment. This evokes Gudynas’ (2021) observation that mining ministries can be (re)developed to promote industrial development alongside environmental preservation in ways that can sustain neoliberal narratives.

Table 1 Overview of main legal and political developments in mineral mining since 2015
Full size table

Another key piece is the Portuguese Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) developed in reaction to the social and economic consequences resulting from COVID-19. Not yet implemented, the PRR is a plan of reforms and investments consisting of €13.9 billion in grants and €2.7 billion in loans between 2021 and 2026 (EC 2021) largely funded by EU funds as it forms part of the European Council’s Next Generation EU, a recovery instrument that mobilizes 750 billion euros for the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism. The PRR was developed to trigger structural reforms in the economy. A major allocation of its funds should involve a strategy created by Galp and Savannah, in a consortium with 15 other entities for the creation of a Lithium Batteries Value Chain (Reis et al. 2021). This project of almost €1 billion intends to develop a hub in Portugal that covers the entire value chain of lithium batteries: from extraction to refining, production, and battery recycling. Addressing the Sustainable Batteries Value Chain at the Iberian Institute of Nanotechnology, Portugal’s Prime Minister expressed his desire for Portugal to be on the front line of technological transition in Europe (Lusa 2021). The funding provided for Portugal is not directly linked to any legal measures but raises the pressure to develop the nation’s large lithium reserves given their importance for Europe’s climate transition (Domingues 2022). In May 2021, a new mining law was published granting municipalities a vote on requests for attribution, prospecting, or exploration of mining rights, although their opinion is not binding and decision-making power lies with the government (Domingues 2022).

Not everyone is convinced that such institutional rearrangements will bring the prosperity regularly claimed by the government and mining corporations. The president of the Economy and Fraud Management Observatory (Observatório de Economia e Gestão de Fraude) has called into question the profitability of lithium mining in Portugal, insinuating that Portuguese lithium reserves are insignificant. According to him, moving forward with lithium projects and “using public funds for the installation in Portugal of a lithium refinery could be seen as a fraud”, because these funds are being used to compensate for risks and potential losses (MiningSEE 2021). Indeed, regulatory frameworks are often used to attract companies by sharing the risks and gains of mineral extraction with the state (de los Reyes 2017). In a relevant development in November 2023, the Prime Minister Antonio Costa resigned in the context of an investigation into charges of corruption in the handling of lithium mining and other renewable energy projects. The Portuguese Infrastructure Minister also resigned, as did the president of APA (Demony and Goncalves 2023).

Challenging green sacrifice: contesting the power to imagine the future

Contesting ways in which the future is imagined is a significant aspect of lithium mining opposition both at the national level (Portugal) and at the local level in Barroso. This aspect might not be the most representative characteristic of opposition to lithium mining, but is nevertheless significant, because it signals attempts to claim autonomy in terms of local communities’ capacity to self-determine their present and future, which we further discuss in our conclusions. We single out three elements of this dispute over ways of imagining the future: reclaiming meaningful life; redefining the circular economy; contesting scales of benefit and decision-making.

First, as concerns reclaiming meaningful life, it is important to keep in mind that a model for regional development exists in Covas do Barroso which is mainly based on farming. Farming and pasture in Barroso rely on collective management of water, forests, and pastures which has helped keep the soil fertile, and rivers and springs clean (Vieira 2020). Residents warn of the contamination that open-pit mining would cause by polluting air, water, soil, and biodiversity, which can directly threaten their agriculture. Additionally, through fragmenting the local landscape mining reduces the economic potential of the region: 300 local producers of regional barrosã meat risk being jeopardized, as well as more than 250 regional honey producers and their 120 thousand hives (Reis et al. 2021). Local concerns emphasize that harmful implications for farming have not been acknowledged in the company’s impact assessments. However, the concern with foregoing land for mining goes beyond the simple loss of economic activity, as land loss would also imply the loss of a long, locally developed mode of being and connection to nature. In that sense, land is not only important in terms of its economic value, but in terms of the connections it provides with a meaningful life.

The way we live, work with the land and relate with nature is unique. For many centuries people have lived from subsistence farming, me too. Since we live with conditions that are harsh and different from other villages that do large-scale agriculture, it is a privilege to live here. We fear that with this project we have to abandon the way we currently live, that we lose our identity, our roots, and that is not what I want for my village. (Local anti-mining activist)

Such comments point out that the real challenge for the region lies in resolving how the disappearance of agriculture and farming methods could be stopped, especially considering the region’s potential for sustainable agriculture. Mining opponents are concerned that the area and its agricultural heritage are to be sacrificed to achieve EU-set climate priorities.

Second, opposition towards mining in Portugal contests the logic of large-scale mining, by putting into question its industrial and growth-driven economic motives and how these connect to the idea of the circular economy.

The Circular Economy should be the common ground to strengthen sustainability and we denounce its incompatibility with a continuous, linear and extractive economy: As long as raw materials are provided in quantity and at low prices, for example through the implementation of ever more mines, there will be no incentive to strengthen the Circular Economy. (Associação Montalegre Com Vida et al. 2020, p. 2)

In this way, resistance to mining challenges more than the location of mines: it challenges the imagined future embedded in policy-making about and the logic of a circular economy compatible with large-scale mining projects and sustained patterns of mining growth. This is indeed in sharp contrast to linear, pro-mining positions that insist on the inevitability of sacrifice in a warming world.

Whatever we face, even if in the future we have more car-sharing and maybe less cars on the street, there will still be an increased need for metals and minerals in the future. It will come back to the question: how do we get access to them? (Policy advisor, EBA)

Third, opposition contests what should be the proper scale of decision-making when it comes to endorsing mining activities, an issue connected to scales of benefit from mining. Pro-mining actors favor local community consultation, but stress that final decision-making should occur outside communities, arguing that communities miss the bigger picture and only care for their particularistic interests. Local communities can give their input, but the final decision should not be given to the local community. One of the pro-mining interviewees defended denying local residents the final say, because they could ignore the greater industrial benefits for the nation and Europe: “Because they, most of the time, only think local and not about the larger industrial benefits for Europe or for the country”.

Instead, mining opponents argue that when decisions are taken outside of communities, the latter are consistently treated unfavorably. The particularistic interests of outsiders take precedence, resulting in the abandonment of economically, politically, and geographically marginalized communities and ecologies, and in the development of an almost colonial ‘center-periphery’ relationship within the country.

“The country is Lisbon” is a saying in Portugal. Lisbon is where everything is decided and done for the wellbeing of those regions, or for the people in the coastal areas. The abandonment of the interior, this is something that is felt by the people here. People feel like they are second-class citizens. They are not valued; they do not receive the benefits in the same way as people in big cities or coastal areas. There might be a colonial relationship between the center of powers in Lisbon and the interior, especially the areas which are more isolated. (Local anti-mining activist)

The continuation of this relationship is achieved through opaque decision-making processes around lithium mining, the argument goes. In fact, a formal complaint against APA for violating European legal environmental regulations by withholding information on the lithium project of Mina do Barroso is under investigation by the Aarhus Committee (PÚBLICO 2021). According to the mayor of Boticas, information “is still inaccessible to the most vulnerable and info-excluded parts of the population in our [municipality]” (MiningSEE 2021).

Resolving the conflict through subject-making in GSZs: “It is our responsibility”

A key characteristic of the making of green sacrifice in our case is the mobilization of the concept of ‘responsibility’ for legitimizing large-scale lithium sourcing in Europe. The rhetoric of responsibility is employed in an attempt to define the logic of action of different actors in the conflict: public institutions, corporations, and citizens in extraction areas. Additionally, the rhetoric attempts defining a distinctive ‘European way’ of showing responsibility in the face of increased mineral needs for a low-carbon transition. We present each one of those elements in turn.

Public institution and corporate responsibility: convincing communities

The discourse on the responsibility of public institutions is characterized by assigning them the role of convincing communities instead of considering opposition. An interesting case involves EU institutions.

There is criticism that Europe is supporting projects and programmes that encourage social acceptance of mining. They will say: “we need to reform public opinion in order for the mine to be accepted” no attention is paid to the concerns about health and the environment in those processes. It is only about how we can make people accept this mine, separate from the impact of the mine (International journalist) (our emphasis)

Emphasis on achieving acceptance can be found at the highest echelons of European decision-making. European institutions focus on seeking effective strategies to convince communities and smoothen the implementation of critical resource mining in Europe.

According to EC’s Vice-President:

“We need to work together to overcome the important challenge of social acceptance by demonstrating that we will not repeat the mistakes of the past. … This means engaging with local communities openly and transparently, and addressing their concerns about potential environmental damage, while highlighting the benefits of raw materials activities for combating climate change and preserving biodiversity”. (Šefčovič, 5 May 2021) (our emphasis)

Indeed, reassurance and public perceptions towards mining are a key topic of EU-sponsored mining conferences,Footnote 1 where science, politics, and business co-produce knowledge that affirms the role of mining in Europe for implementing a just transition. Meanwhile, the mining corporation that is behind the prospective mine development in Barroso is keen to engage in ‘winning the hearts and minds’ of local communities by highlighting the double dividends of lithium mining.

We are keen to earn the respect of local communities through our efforts to integrate the Project into everyday life in the area and by becoming a valued member of local society for the long term. To achieve this, while also providing Europe with the critical lithium raw material it needs to reach its emissions reduction targets, would represent a significant ‘win–win’. (Chairman's statement, Savannah Resources Plc 2021)

Indeed, Savannah developed a Benefit Sharing Plan (BSP) and a Good Neighbor Plan (GNP) to demonstrate “its desire to become a valued member of the local community” and “share the many benefits the Project can bring” (Savannah Resources Plc 2021). Such initiatives help deliver the corporation’s endorsement of corporate social responsibility (CSR), a key element of its discursive strategy, evidenced in its external communications. In his public appearances, Savannah’s CEO not only emphasizes the importance of economic benefits for Portugal and the region, side-by-side with the minor ecological impact and ‘greenness’ of the mine, but also repeatedly stresses the importance of responsibility. Responsibility mostly concerns exploration issues through employment of appropriate technologies and techniques, but also combines with general claims about the corporation’s broader mission as a contributor to Portugal’s sustainable development. According to Savannah’s CEO:

I am sure that we have delivered a responsible proposal for sustainable development.

We believe that we are making responsible development to move forward in order to benefit all the Portuguese, because this … is an asset that benefits the entire country.

We believe it will be an important message to the international mining community that there are mining opportunities in Portugal and that our facilities become the precursors of an innovative mining model, with regard to responsible and sustainable exploration in Europe. We want to use the best techniques, the latest technology and set an example of how the best available techniques can be used in this industry. (Petiz 2021a)

One can also observe this focus on responsibility in Savannah’s purpose statement (“Responsibly enabling Europe’s electric power revolution”) (Savannah Resources Plc n.d.) and its PR brochures on ‘Sustainable and Responsible Mining Industry’ (Prazeres and Coelho n.d.). It is important to keep in mind though that CSR has been criticized on the basis that it is a code of conduct agreed to voluntarily, rather than a legally binding responsibility (Banerjee 2008).

The responsible subject: citizenship and consumption

However, in the Barroso case, responsibility extends beyond the CSR corporate rhetoric, to form part of a rhetorical subject-making tactic which is meant to disqualify anti-mining sentiment. This is best seen in attempts to define what the proper reaction of local populations to lithium mining should be, along the lines of a notion of ‘the responsible citizen’. We see those attempts as attempts to forge environmental subjects (Agrawal 2005), in the sense of formulating the political subject of green sacrifice. Two elements stand out in this process: the drawing of a sharp contrast between responsible and irresponsible subjects; and the emphasis on consumer habits as a key factor for determining citizenship.

At a supranational and personal level, if we wish to opt-in to buying consumer items, whether its mobile phones or EV, we cannot simply opt-out of being responsible for the production and husbandry of the raw materials upon which they rely. (CEO Savannah, at Green Mining Conference on May 5, 2021)

Yes, there is a component of this [NIMBYismFootnote 2 in the mining opposition]... but it is a question of responsibility... It would be desirable to build a circular economy and it does not seem right that consumers want green electricity but do not want to get involved in the raw material needed to feed it. (CEO Savannah, interview Dinheiro Vivo on August 28, 2021)

Those statements position disagreement with lithium sourcing in Europe on the ‘irresponsible’ side of the responsibility continuum. Responsible citizens accept the burdens of mining risks and should silence their opposition out of a moral commitment with the implications of their consumption. Instead, citizens who oppose lithium mining are portrayed as irresponsible, selfish, and almost hypocritical consumers who on the one hand want green energy, but on the other hand sabotage the electrification of the economy by protesting against mining. Such assertions reduce citizenship from playing an active part in the forging of collective politics and decisions, to action determined by the moral implications of one’s consumption practices. Green sacrifice subject-making seeks to produce citizens who support carbon reduction through a conflation of the European citizen and the European consumer.

The attitude of those who behave this way [the mining opposition in Portugal] is neither serious, nor responsible. Even more so if we know that a mining operation limited by tight European regulations will always have all the advantages over a project developed in a region of the world where money speaks louder than any precaution—environmental, economic development, and even human rights. Let's study, demand mitigation measures to match, and monitor that best practices are indeed being followed. But don't waste our time with hollow, selfish wars. (Petiz 2021b)

This fragment taken from a Portuguese newspaper shows how ways in which anti-mining opposition that questions the logic of large-scale mining, and its industrial and growth-driven economic motives are silenced. Opposition and their alternative visions on ecological preservation and climate change mitigation that focuses on the adjustment of production and consumption patterns are placed outside the margins of ‘climate responsibility’ constructed by mining stakeholders and institutions. But interestingly, the quote also points at another key element of green sacrifice subject-making discourses. We call this element ‘responsibility the European way’: leadership through respect at home.

Responsibility the ‘European’ way: leadership through respect at home

Consumers must be responsible. Also, because it is better to produce in accordance with European environmental laws, much tougher and more serious in Europe, and in a political context of leadership for sustainability and best practices than going, for example, to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Because the effects of this choice controlled or not affect us all. The development of the lithium industry has given us new hope to truly act for change, against climate change. (CEO Savannah, interview Dinheiro Vivo on August 28, 2021)

Offshoring of the production of minerals destined for European consumption to jurisdictions with inferior to non-existent labor-laws, limited to minimal environmental controls and governance-like regulation is tantamount to new resource colonialism. In our own case, with the development of Mina da Barroso in Portugal, we recognize both the opportunity and the significance associated with the responsibility of developing the operation. (CEO Savannah, at Green Mining Conference on May 5, 2021)

In this public statement, the company warns of the risks of outsourcing the extraction of lithium outside Europe and reminds people of a collective responsibility not to let mining happen in areas with “minimal labor rights and environmental protection”. Thus, acting for the ‘greater good’ is done by joining the responsible pro-mining side, and consenting to unavoidable, yet responsible ‘green’ mining at home (Europe):

Is it in the best interest of people in third countries abroad if we get our minerals from there? […] For the moment, many of the minerals are mined outside Europe, in processes that are very harmful for the environment, labor rights are also not respected – you’re probably aware of the cobalt mining and child labor (Policy advisor, EBA)

Such statements obscure that insufficient regulation in the ‘global South’ is on its own insufficient for producing social and environmental injustice. This is made possible through the action of corporations that actively make use of “inferior to non-existent labor-laws, [and] limited to minimal environmental controls” to increase profit margins and shareholder value. As a consequence, mining corporations are at least equally responsible for undesirable effects such as child labor and environmental toxicity in sites of extraction (Temper et al. 2015). What is more, such statements promote a notion that respecting human and labor rights in the quest of transition minerals is something that can only happen properly in Europe. Additionally, they represent global South countries primarily as passive resource suppliers for a powerful global North and thus mobilize uncritical forms of Eurocentrism. Resounding neocolonial belief systems, they convey an image of European leadership in terms of ‘best practices’ and ‘sustainability’ which can only be properly realized in the legal and institutional safe havens of Europe itself, as opposed to an unsafe, human rights-violating global South. Somehow, twistingly, this redirects European responsibility (or burden) to lead a low-carbon transition from obtaining energy by sources where human and labor rights are respected full stop, to supporting the sourcing of energy that respects those rights at home (Europe). In a sense, the maxim of respect for human and labor rights universally becomes both equated and conflated with support for respecting human and labor rights in Europe. Notwithstanding its colonial premises, this European model of responsibility in leading low-carbon transitions adds one more crucial argument in the arsenal of legitimizing mining in Europe and of course in the attempt to preempt opposition to it.

Discussion and conclusions

The Barroso mine conflict exemplifies an attempt to reconfigure lithium mining in ways that enable capital accumulation from mining extraction through the rearrangement of key institutions that can accommodate the EU’s need for ‘strategic autonomy’ of critical mineral supply for a just transition. This reconfiguration conflicts with concerns about sustaining meaningful livelihoods in localities targeted for mining. It also clashes with alternative conceptualizations of the circular economy's logic and raises issues about appropriate scales of decision-making for marginalized lands, ecologies, and populations. Green governance reconfigurations attempt to resolve those clashes through the promotion of a discourse of ‘responsibility’, which assigns to public institutions the role of convincing communities and to corporations the role of exercising corporate social responsibility. A responsibility discourse is also mobilized for the production of green sacrifice subjects in zones of green extraction. The political action of those subjects is expected to conform to their consumption habits and help deliver a ‘European way’ of being responsible in a warming world, specifically by facilitating a European leadership model of transition governance that respects human and labor rights at home (Europe).

What does that tell us about the politics of green sacrifice? Other studies on lithium mining conflicts in northern Portugal have established that the making of GSZs advances through a mix of coercive and ‘soft’ technologies of social pacification (Dunlap and Riquito 2023), misrepresentation of local communities and concerns (Canelas and Carvalho 2023), as well as democracy deficits in the sense of restricting local capacity to participate in formal decision-making processes (Alena Saleth and Varov 2023). To those political mechanisms of attempting to advance green sacrifice, our study adds the discourse on responsibility. This is significant, because it helps bring to the fore how green governance for the making of GSZs is advanced also through processes of subjectivation, we elaborate on this in the next paragraph. Beyond Portugal, other analyses of the political dimensions of lithium mining in southern Europe (Spain) find that the discourse of state authorities links lithium extraction to economic hegemony and prosperity to legitimize its expansion (Noever Castelos 2023). And beyond Europe, they establish how employment and socio-economic progress, prosperity and integrating under-developed peripheries, and climate-friendly extraction through association with clean technologies, are three key discursive strategies employed to render lithium extraction acceptable (Voskoboynik and Andreucci 2021).

In our Portuguese case, we find that elements of those discourses are also operating in ways that mobilize mining to reinvigorate the promise of modernity in contemporary European imaginaries of development among corporate and political discourses (del Mármol and Vaccaro 2020). In fact, those discursive elements and imaginary are energetically promoted by corporate interests and political authority to pave the way for ‘green extractivism’ in the sense of “the fantasy of an environmentally and climatically benign resource frontier, of an ultimate technological and ecological fix capable of fueling local and national development while saving global capital from its own ecological contradictions” (Voskoboynik and Andreucci 2021, p. 17). Where our case to some extent differs from those other studies is that we evidence that beyond discourses on extraction or extraction localities, a central element of green governance involves the mobilization of discourses about subjects, or more precisely what we could call green sacrifice subjects, meaning those individuals and populations whose livelihoods, lives, and territories stand to be directly affected by the infrastructure necessary for providing renewable energy futures. The population’s responsibility in a European extraction site is to act as citizens who assume the implications of their consumption patterns: this revealed itself as a key piece of the subject-making in the context of incorporating populations and natural resources—and in particular, land—into circuits of capital accumulation through mining for green transition minerals. In that sense, the Barroso case signals a biopolitics of inclusion approach to energy transitions governance (Andreucci and Zografos 2022) rather than the ‘disciplinary neoliberalism’ evidenced in some cases of the global South (Kenya) where the expansion of a neoliberal model of energy transitions is attempted through discipline and reward (Newell and Phillips 2016).

But side by side with those attempts at subjectivation, we observe attempts for self-constitution, or self-formation. Similarly to Dunlap and Laratte (2022), we evidence that concerns for autonomy may underlie some responses that challenge green energy transition in rural areas of the global North. Here, we understand autonomy in broadly Castoriadian terms as the capacity to self-determine one’s present and future, both at individual and collective levels (Cattaneo et al. 2012). This expresses itself in our case when opposition resists the making of a green sacrifice by reclaiming meaningful lives through the defense of existing livelihood activities (e.g., agricultural heritage farming practices), in that they reclaim a meaning they themselves define (autonomy) instead of this being defined by outsiders (heteronomy). Similarly, opposition contests scales of decision-making by prioritizing decision-making closer to the ‘local’, affected level, and attempts to redefine the overall project of the ‘circular economy,’ claiming that its sustainability logic should not include large-scale mining projects and lineal growth of extractive economies. Such attempts to interfere in the definition of life in territories targeted by lithium mining could perhaps also be conceptualized as performing what Ranciere calls democracy as practice, an understanding of democracy as premised on the manifestation of the always disruptive and conflictive principle of equality (O’Connor 2015), whose operation has also been observed in other European rural peripheries opposing mining (Velicu and Kaika 2017). For Ranciere, democracy is better understood as a practice rather than a system; specifically:

Democracy is the practice of politics; it is the expression of the logic of equality through its assertion by those who have been told, for one reason or another, that they have no part in the determination of their collective lives.

(May 2007, p. 25).

Yet, if democracy as practice can accurately describe the praxis of opposition to green sacrifice, a contradiction emerges between what such praxis tries to achieve and ways in which local grievances are sought to be accommodated by some critical constituencies. For example, certain critical think tanks diagnose exclusion from “real participation in both planning and ownership, resulting in very high level of opposition to top-down renewable energy sources (RES) projects in some territories” (European Environmental Bureau 2022), and advocate for more participation. Similarly, larger scale movements contesting the injustices of just transition (such as for example ALIENTE in Spain) consistently advocate for better and more comprehensive renewable energy infrastructure planning and design processes to listen to local grievances. However, if we take seriously the autonomy element, our study seems to point at a mismatch that emerges between what those grievances are all about and what ‘proper’ planning, participation, and ownership can achieve. If autonomy is indeed central to local concerns, then giving space to local community participation and ownership should also include the possibility of saying ‘no’ to those projects (Dunlap and Laratte 2022; Zografos and Martínez-Alier 2009), something that seems to be at odds with the spirit of just transition, which is to implement the switch to renewables rapidly and effectively, despite, or indeed by overrunning other concerns.

Before closing, we also want to reflect on what our study can say about the concept of green sacrifice. According to Faherty (2022), we can distinguish between two understandings of sacrifice: a popular use of the term which describes “some sort of renunciation or giving up of something valuable in order that something more valuable might be obtained” as when parents make sacrifices for their children; and a religious one in which “an object is offered to a divinity in order to establish, maintain, or restore a right relationship of a human being to the sacred order” (ibid). Now, if one considers Castoriadis’s assertation that economic growth represents a modern-day, secular equivalent of religious dogmas (Cattaneo et al. 2012), green sacrifice could be understood as an essential element for re-establishing or maintaining a relationship with economic growth and a liberal order of governance evident in dominant Green New Deal (GND) narratives (Zografos 2022), which are threatened by climate chaos. What is more, in our case study, we observe that, in green sacrifice, the two understandings of sacrifice coalesce and complement each other. At face value, the popular understanding of the term is advanced, e.g., by requesting populations in Barroso to accept sacrifice for the benefit of the planet and vulnerable populations, such as people working in inhumane conditions in DRC mines and other sites outside Europe. However, while this argument is advanced by invoking ‘responsibility’, it simultaneously facilitates the operation of the second understanding of sacrifice, in which Barroso’s land and underground resources are consumed to re-establish or maintain connections to economic growth threatened in the midst of climate chaos. In that sense, green sacrifice becomes a vital technology of power for keeping capitalist relations afloat in a warming planet.

A just transition is undeniably an imperative in the midst of climate crisis. However, the politics of implementing it might deepen or widen democracy, inequality, and conflict in a warming planet. Questions of whether and how this is happening call for further research into the politics of implementing low-carbon transitions and green sacrifice.