Belgrade
Jelena Micić, mirko nikolić, Pokret Tvrđava
Smelting Friendship
(in Smederevo)
Smelting Friendship (in Smederevo) is a collaborative research-based case-study of the Smederevo steelwork’s environmental impact.
Smederevo is in Serbia, on the southern coast of the Danube. The town has been home to the metalworking industry since 1913, initially financed by the Austrian State Railway Company (Staats-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft) together with Serbian industrialists. After an era of selfmanagement, the factory was privatised in 2001. Since 2016, the Železara steel working facility has been operated by its “strategic partner”, a large steel conglomerate from China. The steelwork in Smederevo is referred to by the Serbian government officials as a manifestation of “iron friendship” (čelično prijateljstvo / 钢铁友谊). The agreement is connected to the geopolitical trade war for “ natural resources” between the EU and the People’s Republic of China.
The environmental impact of the steelwork is evident – the surrounding villages are exposed to grave heavy metal particulate matter (PM) emissions. Iron ore is shipped in from overseas, transported for further processing to various destinations along the Danube, and ends up in the Jezava channel as polluted red mud sludge. The relationship of the workers to the factory is complex – while the lives of entire families depend financially on the existence of the steelwork, they are also left without protections and suffer from increasing damages due to a lack of environmental standards.
What are the actual costs of iron-intense patterns of development? Can we iron our way out of the climate crisis? And who is carrying the burden of the “green” transition?
