In early 2020, headlines in Serbia lauded the creation of Serbia’s first database of mining waste, a 2.1 million-euro project 90 per cent funded by the European Union. The country’s mining and energy ministry said Serbia at last had “a clear picture of mining waste” as the first step to dealing with it and protecting the environment.
More than four years later, that picture does not look so clear.
Until recently, the online application presenting the Cadastre of Mining Waste to the public and published on the website of the Ministry of Mining and Energy contained only limited data on 41 abandoned mining waste dumps and nothing on active mining sites. The project was supposed to bring together data from hundreds of locations across the country.
A BIRN investigation found that more detailed data on far more dumps was available on the publicly accessible server of the ministry’s website in machine-readable format. This data showed that among the abandoned dumps are sites containing hazardous waste, some in areas currently at risk from landslides.
It is unclear whether this data was up to date and valid or if it was collected as part of the Cadastre project.
In December 2022, Serbia’s State Audit Institution put it bluntly: “The mining waste management system in Serbia is not effective,” it said in a report, adding that “a unified database on mining waste has not been established”.
Dragana Nisic, a professor at the Department of Occupational Safety and Environmental Protection at the Faculty of Mining in Belgrade, said the Cadastre of Mining Waste should be expanded, primarily to include active mining waste dumps, and brought into line with the regulation on waste management permits.
“Each dump should include data on the nature of the waste, the quantity of waste deposited, the ore from which the waste is generated, the risk of accidents, etc.,” Nisic told BIRN. In the interests of better public awareness, all data should be “fully transparent”, she said.
“In its current form, the Cadastre does not meet these needs.”
The German companies Plejades and DMT, which won the tender to create the cadastre, did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Neither did the ministry or the EU Delegation. After BIRN wrote to the ministry, all the data disappeared, both from the online application and from the server of the ministry website.
Data confusion
Read More: €2 Million EU-Funded Database of Serbian Mining Waste ‘Incomplete’