How much is water worth? The United Nations has warned that the world faces a looming “water bankruptcy,” with more than half of the planet’s large lakes declining since the 1990s and 35% of natural wetlands lost since 1970.
Europe is not exempt. Water stress is intensifying across the continent, yet at the very moment protections should be strengthened, a concerted industry push to weaken EU water legislation is gaining ground. This tension is visible in southern Sweden, where for sixteen years, farmers, residents, and environmental groups around Lake Vättern have been resisting a mine that would put both their water and their future at risk. The project, Norra Kärr, is being promoted in the name of the green transition. But the real question is whether Europe’s rush for “strategic” raw materials will override the ecological limits that any genuine transition is supposed to respect.
The Paradox of the “Green” Transition
Rare earth elements are a subset of 17 metals essential not only to the so-called “green” transition but also to modern warfare. Dysprosium and terbium, both found in significant quantities at Norra Kärr, are critical for the permanent magnets in electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, and defence technologies.
That is precisely why the European Union, through its Critical Raw Materials Act, has classified these elements as “strategic.”
Currently, China dominates global refining, and recent export restrictions have sent prices spiking, creating anxieties over access for Europe. Leading Edge Materials, an Australian company involved in the Norra Kärr project, argues that this deposit represents one of the world’s most significant heavy rare earth deposits.
But geopolitical panic should not erase environmental reality. Rare earth mining is energy-intensive and polluting, generating hazardous and often radioactive waste, as rare earth elements are frequently found alongside uranium and thorium.
A lake that should never be treated as expendable
The Norra Kärr project is located approximately 15 kilometres north of Gränna and just 1.5 kilometres from the shoreline of Lake Vättern. That proximity is the heart of the conflict.
Vättern is not just any lake. It is a Natura 2000 site, recognised for its rare habitat as a nutrient-poor, cold freshwater lake of exceptional clarity and ecological sensitivity. It is the drinking water source for over 300,000 people, a figure that could rise to 700,000 in the coming years.
Two key EU laws protect such waters: the Habitats Directive, under which Vättern is a Natura 2000 site requiring rigorous impact assessment; and the Water Framework Directive (WFD), the bloc’s flagship water law, which requires Member States to prevent further destruction of Europe’s water environment and bring all waters to “good status.”
However, both laws are now under unprecedented pressure. A recent investigation by DeSmog reveals a concerted lobbying blitz by the mining industry to weaken the WFD. Meetings between mining sector representatives and EU officials more than tripled in 2025, surging to 108 from 30 the previous year, coinciding with the drafting of the European Commission’s ReSourceEU Action Plan, which explicitly aims to address “potential bottlenecks” for new mining projects.
“With the current industry-backed political drive for the extraction of critical raw materials, it’s more important than ever to uphold and implement the vital rules that exist to protect Europe’s water. Rewriting the rules to the liking of the mining industry would be a reckless move by Commissioner Roswall.” – Sara Johansson, Senior Policy Officer for Water
A mine proposal with a long and troubled history
The Norra Kärr saga began in 2009, when the Canadian mining company Tasman Metals, later rebranded as Leading Edge Materials, began pursuing a mining lease through its Swedish subsidiary, Greenna Mineral AB. In 2011, the Swedish Geological Survey designated Norra Kärr a deposit of national interest. A concession was granted in 2013 but revoked in 2016 by the Supreme Administrative Court, which found the company had failed to provide sufficient environmental safeguards.
In 2021, the company redesigned the project, removing chemical processing from the site and supposedly reducing the operational footprint by 65 per cent. A fresh concession application was filed in late 2024, and in December 2025, both the Jönköping and Östergötland County Administrative Boards endorsed it.
But administrative support does not make the risks disappear. It only pushes the unresolved questions further down the line.
Untested Technology and Expensive Pollution
Norra Kärr contains a mineral called eudialyte. That matters because eudialyte has never been processed commercially for rare earths anywhere in the world. When dissolved in acid, it releases silica that turns into a thick gel, clogging equipment, trapping valuable minerals and making waste handling extremely difficult.
German scientists have achieved nearly 90 per cent extraction rates in lab tests. But a lab is not a mine. Scaling that process up to industrial levels remains unproven.
The economics are hardly reassuring either. Average ore grades at Norra Kärr are just 0.59 per cent rare earth oxide. That means that for every tonne of rock processed, more than 994 kilograms is not the target material.
The company’s answer is to redefine much of that material as a by-product rather than waste. It claims that at least 60 per cent of excavated material could be sold, mainly as crushed nepheline syenite for glass and ceramics.
But that depends on demand that has not yet been secured. As of early 2025, no buyers had been confirmed. Reported price expectations ranged from a mere $12 to a hopeful $500 per tonne.
If those buyers fail to materialise, millions of tonnes of crushed rock remain. Even in the best case, the unsaleable 40 per cent would produce an enormous volume of tailings containing uranium and thorium. Those elements do not become less radioactive because nepheline syenite found a buyer. They will remain on a hillside, a stone’s throw from the stream that flows into Lake Vättern.
Exploitation at What Cost?
This is where the risk becomes immediate. According to the Lake Vättern Water Protection Association, Greenna Mineral AB intends to pump water out of the mine and discharge it into Stavabäcken, a stream that flows directly into Lake Vättern.
Stavabäcken is not an insignificant stream. It flows through ecologically valuable areas, passes char spawning grounds, and ultimately drains into a lake that takes around 60 years to flush out any pollution that enters.
In March 2026, the Mining Inspectorate formally recommended granting the concession. But because of a disagreement with one of the County Administrative Boards over ecological conditions, the final decision was escalated to the Swedish government. If it approves, the company still faces a separate environmental permit process before Sweden’s Land and Environment Court.
As Carina Gustafsson of Urbergsgruppen Grenna-Norra Kärr, a local grassroots association opposing the mine, put it:
“In a time when climate change renders shallow freshwater sources unusable, Lake Vättern’s depth guarantees resilience for producing safe drinking water. To suggest gutting the EU Water Framework Directive under these circumstances is a betrayal of every person who depends on this lake.”
Meanwhile, the mining industry has been explicit about what it wants. In February 2026, Raw Materials Europe published a joint statement calling for targeted amendments to the WFD, including a softer definition of “deterioration”, easier derogations from environmental objectives, and the suspension of a parallel EU Water Package that would have tightened existing protections.
View on Vättern lake from Brahehus hights
The Final Reckoning at Norra Karr
The mine, if it operates perfectly for its projected lifespan, will generate finite profits for a finite period. Twenty years, perhaps thirty. Then it closes. The jobs go away. The tax revenue stops. The company moves on.
The lake, if protected, provides value indefinitely. Drinking water for half a million people. Commercial fishing. Recreation. Tourism. Biodiversity. These are not abstract benefits, they are economically quantifiable. Even a single contamination event would destroy that perpetual value.
Lake Vättern cannot be sacrificed. Not because mining is inherently bad. Not because rare earths aren’t needed. It cannot be sacrificed because some things, once lost, cannot be recovered. Because half a million people did not ask to be guinea pigs for an experimental mine. Because the precautionary principle exists precisely for cases where the consequences of being wrong are measured in generations, not years.
The Swedish government now holds that principle in its hands. There is no fixed timeline for its decision. There is only the lake, waiting.
So how much is water worth? For Lake Vättern, there is no price.