Adriatic Metals’ ruthless mining: How can the EBRD help improve its clients’ practices when it doesn’t follow its own standards? 27 July 2023

In 2020, nature-lovers from Kakanj started to notice tree-cutting in the mountains behind the town, together with damage to biodiversity, and heavy machinery carrying out unspecified works. Gradually it became clear that a zinc, lead and barytes mine was planned by Adriatic Metals, and that the EBRD had bought shares in the company.

Due to a complete lack of consultation with people from Kakanj, in August 2022, a group of citizens filed a complaint to the EBRD’s Independent Project Accountability Mechanism (IPAM) requesting a Compliance Review procedure to establish if there had been breaches of the EBRD’s Environmental and Social Policy.

Additionally, they contacted Bankwatch and in November 2022 we visited the area. They showed us an apparently endless road which had been newly built in the mountains to access the mine. We identified several issues of concern and contacted EBRD staff and IPAM...

During the visit, it immediately became clear that the road to the mine had been built in a different location to the one examined in the EBRD’s environmental studies. And it had been done carelessly. It was built on a pre-existing forest path, considerably widened by dug-out stone material. This also narrowed the stream bed running in parallel, which local people fear will increase flood and landslide risks...

The mountainous area around the mine is an important natural area, including for large carnivores such as bears and wolves. In 2013, the Kakanj authorities commissioned a study on the legal protection of the Trstionica forest, planned under the Spatial Plan and Development Strategy of the Zenica-Doboj Canton. However, formal protection never happened. By coincidence or not, the mine is being developed nearby this forest.

The EBRD’s environmental studies show that the mine and its access roads will damage so-called ‘critical habitats’, which include important habitats for endangered, critically endangered, endemic or geographically restricted species. Yet, the Bank’s Environmental and Social Policy prohibits works in such habitats unless very stringent conditions are met.

But in this case, although adjustments were made to avoid some critical habitats such as bear dens, the project environmental studies dismiss the remaining ones as not that critical after all, instead of seriously assessing whether the project should be further changed or stopped.

Already at the time of our visit it was clear that the new access road had seriously damaged one such habitat – Vrući potok. The stream was also seriously muddy, presumably from the preparatory works for the mine. There are also new findings that Adriatic Metals may have further damaged other habitats of endangered animals...

In response, the Federal Ministry for the Environment and Tourism sent environmental inspectors to the scene and in mid-July, announced that several violations had been found. The landfill was not lined, no concrete channels were built at the edges, no sedimentation tank was formed, and the landfill is not fenced. Adriatic Metals was given a deadline to comply with the inspectorate’s requirements and an additional inspection was initiated to better understand the nature of the materials being dumped...

Some Kakanj residents are extremely concerned about the project’s impact on the town’s water supply...it remains unclear whether an adequate water supply can be maintained for both the mine and Kakanj during dry periods...

Local people in Kakanj have pointed out that there was a complete lack of public consultation about the mine in the town. These claims are supported by the EBRD’s environmental studies, which show consultations only in the much smaller town of Vareš. As far as Kakanj residents are concerned, besides a few representatives of local villages in neighbouring settlements, no other residents of the broader community were made aware of the project...