Potentials and Obstacles for the Transnationalisation of Recent Environmental Struggles in Serbia

Abstract

Considering the growing tendency of contemporary environmental movements from the Global North to internationalise their struggles, in this paper we try to explore the potentials and obstacles of recent environmental initiatives in Serbia - the protests against small hydropower plants and struggles against the exploitation of lithium - to scale-up from the lo- cal to national and transnational level. Focusing on the discursive framing of these initiatives based on the analysis of the digital content created and shared by environmental organisations and activists on social media, we investigate to what extent eco-nationalism represents an in- centive or a barrier for the creation of transnational alliances. We also explore the willingness of this movement’s advocates to participate in organised collective actions addressing their grievances to international institutions, and especially to the European Union. We interpret the emergence of eco-nationalism as related to the environmentalism of the poor/dispossessed, which arises as a reaction to the commodification of natural resources, advancing neoliberal policies and neoextractivism on the (semi-)periphery of the world capitalist system.

S obzirom na sve izraženiju tendenciju suvremenih ekoloških pokreta da internacionaliziraju svoje borbe, u ovom radu pokušavamo istražiti potencijale i prepreke nedavnih ekoloških inicijativa u Srbiji - prosvjeda protiv malih hidroelektrana i borbi protiv eksploatacije litija - da se prošire s lokalne do nacionalne i transnacionalne razine. Fokusirajući se na diskurzivno uokvirivanje ovih inicijativa temeljeno na analizi digitalnog sadržaja koji su ekološke organizacije i aktivisti kreirali i dijelili na društvenim mrežama, istražujemo u kojoj mjeri ekonacionalizam predstavlja poticaj ili prepreku za stvaranje transnacionalnih saveza te njihovu spremnost na sudjelovanje u organiziranim kolektivnim akcijama upravljenima prema međunarodnim institucijama, a posebno prema Europskoj uniji. Pojavu eko-nacionalizma tumačimo povezanom s ekologizmom siromašnih/razvlaštenih, koji se javlja kao reakcija na komodifikaciju prirodnih resursa, širenje neoliberalnih politika i neoekstraktivizam na (polu)periferiji svjetskog kapitalističkog sustava.