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Just a few days from World Glacier Protection Day, nearly 100,000 people have collapsed Argentina’s House of Representatives’ website demanding to participate in the congressional debate around modifying Argentina’s Glacier Protection Law, the only law on the planet that protects glaciers and frozen grounds of the periglacial environment because they are hydrological reserves and have the critical function of regulating water basins. As Congress gears up to debate the reforms to the glacier law, thousands of Argentines have mobilized across the country to say “NO to reforming the glacier law!”
Since 2008, Argentina voted unanimously (through Congress) that water is worth more than mineral resources in sensitive high mountain environments of the Andes, and prohibited mining activity as well as oil and gas operations in cold environments where ice is conserved both on the surface (in glaciers) and in the subsurface (permafrost regions of the periglacial environment). Mining projects like Pascua Lama and Veladero (Barrick Gold) and El Pachón (Glencore) have dynamited ice, opened mining roads, and contaminated glaciers and periglacial areas because of their extractive operations, precisely what Argentina’s glacier law is trying to avoid.
By request of companies like Barrick Gold, and owners of projects like El Pachón, Los Azules (San Juan Province), and Agua Rica (Catamarca), in 2008, then President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner vetoed the law, because she considered that the law “could affect the economic development of provinces” and alluded in the veto expressly to the mining sector s the reason for the veto. The presidential veto, referred to by those that defend the glacier law as the “Barrick Veto”, resulted in a nationwide campaign and fight in Congress to get the glacier law back.
Dozens of mining companies in provinces including San Juan, Mendoza, La Rioja, Catamarca, Salta, and Jujuy, that proposed developing mining projects in glacier and periglacial areas halted their investments, awaiting for the debate around the glacier law to play out in Congress. Following a lengthy congressional debate and nationwide social protests in defense of the glacier law, in September of 2010, Congress voted to reinstall Argentina’s National Glacier Law, stalling mining projects like El Pachón, Los Azules, Josemaria, Vicuña, Pascua Lama, and many others that were planned in glacier and periglacial areas. Barrick Gold immediately attacked the newly enacted glacier law following its adoption in 2010 and while the company won an initial injunction in federal courts to suspend the law, Argentina’s Supreme Court would eventually revert the ruling and uphold the glacier law, against Barrick.
Today, Argentina’s Executive wants to remove barriers to mining operations in glacier and periglacial environments and is proposing a modification to the glacier law by Congress (with the Senate already approving the modification with 40 affirmative votes, 31 against and 1 abstention). The reform bill would give provinces the discretion to decide what glaciers and periglacial areas it wants to sacrifice to mining companies, and would allow provinces the ability to define what glaciers and periglacial environments are relevant hydrological reserves. The current glacier protection law that is in force establishes that all glaciers and periglacial areas with ice are hydrological reserves, that they regulate water basins and that they are protected by law. The law also establishes that the Argentine Snow, Glacier and Environmental Sciences Institute (IANIGLA) shall carry out a glacier inventory for Argentina, a task completed in 2018 which identified nearly 17,000 glaciers across the country.
The bill to reform the current glacier law has again unleashed a heated debate between the executive power party and the opposition, centered around the issue that the reform which would give provinces discretion on what it considers relevant to protect would undermine the minimum environmental protection standards that the glacier law currently sets. It would also violate the Escazu Agreement and the recent Inter-American Court Advisory Opinion on Climate Change, which obliges countries not to regress on environmental protection. Additionally, the reform would undermine science by giving subnational authorities discretion to set there own definitions of what is a relevant glacier or periglacial hydrological relevance and function. The reform would also allow provinces the power to remove glaciers from the national glacier inventory which is carried out by tecnical experts and scientists.
The next step, before moving on with the Congressional debate in the House of Deputies is a public consultation to take place on March 25 and 26. The virtual platform for this consultation is already at a breaking point, collapsing the Congressional website with nearly 100,000 people asking to follow the debate and give their opinion to the proposed glacier law reform bill. The virtual platform for contributing to the debate has not worked for the past three days as political pressure mounts against the proposed reforms of the glacier law.
Publications by CHRE on Mining and Glaciers
- Barrick’s Glaciers. 2013
- Glaciers & Periglacial Environments in Diaguita-Huascoaltino Indigenous Territory
- Impact to Rock Glaciers and Periglacial Environments by Los Azules
- Impacts to Rock Glaciers and Periglacial Environments by Filo Colorado and Agua Rica
- Impact to Glaciers by El Pachon. (English) (Spanish)
- The Periglacial Environment and the Mining Sector in Argentina: National Glacier Law
- Risks to Glaciers & Periglacial Environments at the Cerro Amarillo Project (Spanish)
[photo: The El Pachon Mining Project in San Juan Argentina, recognizes that it is in a periglacial environment]