Two-day workshop for journalists “The Importance and Role of the Media in Environmental Protection” was closed with lecture on “heavy metals” thereby referring to actual attempting to exploit nickel and cobalt on the mountain Ozren and place Jezero.
Zoran Poljašević, environmental protection engineer, introduced journalists with what happened on Ozren when firm Medeni brijeg from Bijeljina under the patronage of “Lykos Balkan Metals”, started with geological research on the locality of Ozren but was prevented by locals.
Poljašević explained that the processing of heavy metals is extremely dangerous and can permanently destroy habitats, i.e. nature.
Although geological research has been stopped, Poljašević suspects that it is only temporary, because the demand for nickel and other heavy metals is huge, having in mind that this metal is used for the production of batteries for electric cars, which production and use in Europe is constantly growing.
“One electric battery for a car requires 15 kilograms of nickel, which price is constantly increasing on the market,” Poljašević said, adding: “If you start exploiting heavy metals, forget about water!”
The workshops also discussed sustainable urban mobility and new initiatives for the protection of rivers in BiH, and journalists from various media in BiH had the opportunity to exchange experiences and opinions with Andrej Dimitrijević, a journalist from the Croatian Telegram portal, who this year received the Velebit Degenija award, which has been awarded in Croatia since 1998 for the best journalistic papers on nature protection. They were also presented with a competition for the regional journalism award “Srđan Aleksić”, for which media articles on the topic of environmental protection will be also able to apply.
The cycle of workshops that we organized together with the Center for Environment started in Pecka and ended in Banja Luka. The organization of the workshops was supported by journalismfund.eu.
Thank you to all the media who attended the workshops in both Banja Luka and Pecka and we hope to read more about these topics.
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