- A bill to reform Argentina’s National Glacier Law would scale back protections that currently restrict mining and other development near glaciers in the Andes and beyond.
- Argentina has 8,484 square kilometers (3,276 square miles) of ice cover spanning 12 provinces and 39 river basins; together, they provide the country with freshwater for drinking, agriculture and other needs.
- If approved, the reform would weaken national environmental standards by allowing provinces to decide whether certain glaciers have a “strategic water function” worth protecting.
- The bill is expected to go to a vote in the Senate later this month and, if passed, would then move on to the lower house of Congress.
Officials in Argentina are considering a reform to the country’s glacier protection law, a change critics say would weaken environmental regulations and clear the way for expanded mining in some of the country’s most fragile ecosystems.
The bill to reform the glacier law is scheduled for a vote in the Senate later this month; if passed, it would then move on to the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the National Congress. Lawmakers will have to decide whether they want to scale back protections that currently restrict mining and other development near glaciers in the Andes and beyond.
“This reform, if approved, would set a negative precedent for other environmental protection regulations and puts at risk strategic resources for the provision of freshwater and the regulation of watersheds that supply different localities and jurisdictions in our country,” the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN), an NGO, said in a statement.
Argentina has 8,484 square kilometers (3,276 square miles) of ice cover spanning 12 provinces and 39 river basins, according to the National Glacier Inventory, a scientific registry and map database overseen by the Argentine Institute of Snow Research, Glaciology and Environmental Sciences (IANIGLA).
Glaciers are important freshwater reserves, supplying water for drinking, agriculture and other needs throughout the country. They feed into around 40% of the country’s watersheds and provide access to water to 7 million residents, or around 18% of Argentina’s population, according to FARN.
In 2010, lawmakers passed the National Glacier Law to preserve ice cover as a “strategic water reserve.” The law was also designed to protect biodiversity and ensure glaciers continue to be a source of tourism and scientific information. The law shields glaciers from infrastructure, mining and hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation, as well as the release of polluting substances.
Smaller-scale development that’s permitted on or near glaciers — including some pipelines, roads and the construction of research stations — still requires an environmental impact assessment.
Under the current law, these restrictions automatically apply to all ice cover listed in IANIGLA’s National Glacier Inventory, which uses data from 2018 and is currently being updated.
President Javier Milei and the mining sector have criticized the law, saying the National Glacier Inventory is too broad, causing the country to miss out on billions of dollars of investment.
Under the reform, ice cover would no longer be protected just because it’s listed in the National Glacier Inventory. Instead, provinces would get to decide whether some of that ice cover should be exempt based on “strategic water function” in supplying rivers.
Critics point out that glaciers are complex ecosystems, not just water reservoirs. In addition to preventing erosion and landslides, they overlap with the land of Indigenous communities, who rely on them for their livelihoods, according to the Association of Lawyers of Buenos Aires, which released a statement opposing the reform.
“The lack of protection for these ecosystems directly affects access to water, water sovereignty, and the cultural continuity of Indigenous communities, whose worldview recognizes an indivisible relationship between the people, water, and territory, understood not as resources but as constitutive parts of their very existence,” the association’s statement said.
Delegating protection decisions to the provinces undermines national environmental standards, the association said. It would violate Article 41 of Argentina’s Constitution, which mandates minimum national environmental standards, commonly described as a “floor” of protection.
Without that baseline, provinces could allow different levels of development depending on how they assess the value of their glaciers. According to the Argentine Wildlife Foundation, it’s an unfair process for areas that rely on freshwater from ice cover located in other provinces, as is the case in La Pampa.
Instead of an outright prohibition on infrastructure, mining and hydrocarbon activities, provinces could deem an environmental impact assessment (EIA) as sufficiently rigorous oversight. But EIAs typically aim to mitigate harm rather than eliminate it entirely, critics say.
“By prioritizing the environmental impact assessment, case by case, over a strategic watershed-level vision, the uniform protection required by minimum environmental standards is lost,” FARN said in its statement.
The reform comes at a time when the government is trying to boost the mining sector to meet demands for critical minerals used in the clean energy transition, such as copper, gold, silver and molybdenum.
President Milei introduced the Incentive Regime for Large Investments in 2024 to boost economic development and attract foreign investment of more than $200 million in energy, mining, infrastructure and other sectors.
This month, Argentina and the U.S. also signed a reciprocal trade and investment agreement that reduces tariffs across multiple sectors and provides increased access to the country’s mining sector, including exploration, extraction, refining and export.
The agreement includes prioritizing the U.S. as a critical mineral trade partner and fast-tracking some projects by working with provincial governments.
Several projects on or near glaciers could benefit from the changes, observers say, including McEwen Copper’s Los Azules mine, Glencore’s El Pachón mine, and BHP & Lundin Mining’s Vicuña mine, all located in San Juan province.
“The modification of the Glacier Law would not only expand the scope of mining projects such as Los Azules, El Pachón and [Vicuña] over glaciers and periglacial environments, but would also function as a mechanism to validate mining projects that have so far been approved in violation of the Glacier Law,” FARN said in its statement.
Banner image: Tourists trek on the Perito Moreno Glacier at the Los Glaciares National Park in the Patagonia region, Southern Argentina. (AP Photo/Eduardo Di Baia)
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