For well over a century, the favored metaphor for Balkan trouble has been fire. A cartoon from the eve of World War I depicts the Great Powers — Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and Austro-Hungary — standing atop a cauldron of boiling water, struggling to contain the “Balkan troubles” therein. A few decades before that, Otto von Bismarck predicted that the next European conflagration would emerge from the region, assuring that the epithet “powder keg” would forever be attached to it. “Europe today is a powder keg, and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal … A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all … I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where … Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off.” There are variations on the theme: some have used the term “tinderbox”; a recent docu-series about the break-up of Yugoslavia was titled The Balkans in Flames. I could go on. But it is not just another lazy cliché used by Western journalists and experts; fire has also been employed as metaphor by the region’s poets. Branko Miljkovic’s poem titled “Yugoslavia,” published in 1981, offered a prophecy a decade before the country’s dissolution: “Everything that doesn’t have fire in itself burns out.”
Today, the Balkans are sounding out another warning. The world outside is burning, and the air is dangerous to breathe. The Balkans are choking on particulate matter, aerosol, smoke, and ash. Over the past decade or so, the environment has grown increasingly hostile to human life. Summer temperatures have soared, and now routinely break historic records, while winter air pollution has grown hazardous: regional capitals have started appearing on the list of the most polluted cities on earth. On summer and winter mornings, the first thing I do when I wake up in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, where I have lived on and off for a decade, is check apps that tell me whether it’s safe to go outside. In wintertime, people burn all kinds of things to stay warm — wood, treated leather, even tires — while outdated coal plants emit pollutants, and we inhale excess solid particles and liquid droplets of aerosols, dust, dirt, soot, and smoke suspended in air. I have started planning my days around pollution, a practice that started this winter. I use the AirVisual app, which gives me the AQI (Air quality index) at my location. On a good day, the index is green — meaning the air quality is good. On bad days, the AQI soars, and the index is orange (“unhealthy for sensitive groups”) or worse, red (“unhealthy”). The app offers recommendations to mitigate the risk the elevated PM poses to human health: “avoid outdoor exercise, close your windows to avoid dirty outdoor air, wear a mask outdoors, run an air purifier.”
But usually, I already know. On a day when Belgrade, Skopje, Sarajevo, or Pristina top the list of the cities with the most polluted air in the world, I can feel it. Sometimes it’s a feeling of heightened anxiety and general malaise. I can’t concentrate; I feel like I have a rubber band wrapped around my head. I wake up with a sore throat. Every morning feels like the beginning of a cold. I cough and wheeze. I am always a little bit sick. It’s like having a cold that never goes away.
Sometimes I imagine the particulate matter burrowing into my lungs as microscopic shards of arrow-shaped glass. I wonder about the long-term effects, about how many months or years of my life have been taken by the air. The pollution is killing people at an alarming rate. New research by the Renewables and Environmental Regulatory Institute found that one in ten deaths in Serbia can now be attributed to air pollution. A few years ago, a study revealed that air pollution causes around 3,000 premature deaths in the Western Balkans each year, along with 8,000 new cases of bronchitis in children. Despite the gloom, life goes on. Billboards across Balkan capitals advertise air filters for sale in appliance stores; the most popular model seems to be the Chinese Xiaomi Smart Air purifier. The first person I knew in Belgrade who bought one had his shipped to Serbia five years ago; he named it “Mao.” He told me that he used it to get girls: he would invite them over to his apartment for a drink and a clean place to breathe.
I finally bought one last year. On days when the air is bad, the air purifier whirs to life as soon as I crack the window. The fans inside grow loud and labored, like a machine wheezing. The number on my Mao’s the display turns red and start to climb.
Meanwhile, summers keep getting hotter. When I wake up, I open the weather app to see how dangerously hot I should prepare for it to get, and for how long the high temperatures will last. From noon onward, the cities have a desolate look. The streets are half-emptied of people, as those who can take refuge at the seaside or in air conditioned rooms.
Extreme heat warnings have been issued across the region for weeks. There is consensus among long-time residents and locals: in the past, heatwaves lasted a few days, but now they are unrelenting. Now they last for most of the summer. Health officials have urged people to stay hydrated and to stay indoors. During the hottest period, the Greek Ministry of Culture closed the Acropolis. In some Greek municipalities, air-conditioned spaces have been made available to the public. The heatwave was historic, breaking all available records. Croatia registered the highest ever temperatures in the Adriatic Sea. The mayor of the Croatian capital of Zagreb made access to all the city’s swimming pools free. In the Bosnian city of Mostar, road signs warned of perilous temperatures. Mendim Rugova, a meteorologist from Kosovo, told Reuters that temperatures in his country had been rising an average of 2.5 degrees per year since the 1980s. In Serbia, the entirety of Rusanda Lake dried up for the first time in history. The salt lake is known for the healing properties of its mud, which has been utilized as therapy for rheumatism and gout dating back at least to the 1760s.
Several towns have declared states of emergency due to the heat. Tourists have been dropping dead. Most come from more northern climates and have died while out hiking in the heat, unprepared for the merciless extent of it. They are not armed with the knowledge of official safety precautions now known to locals. A new report published in Nature Medicine said that over 47,000 people died in Europe last year due to heat. Balkan countries – Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Croatia, and Cyprus – accounted for a disproportionate number of those deaths. Dozens of wildfires have burned through the region this summer, and many are still burning. Towns in Albania, North Macedonia, Croatia, Greece, and Serbia have been forced to evacuate. In late July, an official from North Macedonia’s crisis management department told Reuters that “half the country is in flames.” This is now the general direction of things. Some climate scientists say that by 2050, Belgrade summers will be like Cairo’s.
The record heatwave has prompted a huge spike in energy consumption, as the use of air conditioning soars. In Serbia, Croatia, and Bulgaria, the summer heatwave has led to record-breaking consumption of energy. With the region still heavily dependent on coal, the heatwave has also meant more carbon emissions — and more pollutants from fine particulate matter in the air.
The worst is yet to come, and it may be coming sooner than expected. In July, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic were in Belgrade to sign a memorandum of understanding with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic formalizing a “strategic partnership” on the exploitation of raw materials. The purpose of the meeting was the reinstatement of a controversial lithium mining project in Serbia’s Jadar Valley. The EU’s “historic pact” with Serbia will allow Brussel to secure lithium for electric car batteries and reduce its dependence on supplies from China. Serbia is thought to possess the largest reserve of lithium in Europe.
But the lithium mine will likely come with steep environmental costs. Serbia’s air is already polluted, and now its water supply could be too. A group of Serbian scientists recently published a paper in Nature that details the likely implications of the EU’s lithium mining project: a constant threat of contamination downstream of the mine’s landfills, and an endangered water supply “loaded with hazardous substances such as boron and arsenic”.
The Balkans are growing unlivable, and barring a titanic shift in political will, that trend is all but certain to continue.
On bad days, ordinary life has become a struggle against the elements. The specter of war remains, but neighboring countries no longer represent the only enemy or threat. The threat is now the sun, the water, and the air.