Argentina Approves Law Allowing Mining in Glacier Zones

Argentina Approves Law Allowing Mining in Glacier Zones

Quick Reads

• Argentina’s lower house of Congress approved a bill on Thursday opening Andean glacier and permafrost zones to mining activity.
• The Chamber of Deputies passed the amendment 137 to 111, with three abstentions, after nearly 12 hours of debate.
• The reform removes federal scientific oversight of glacier protection and hands classification authority to individual provinces.
• Thousands rallied outside parliament on Wednesday; seven Greenpeace activists were arrested after scaling a statue and hanging a protest banner.
• Critics warn the change threatens freshwater for tens of millions of Argentines, while the government says it will unlock billions in mining investment.

Argentina’s Congress cleared a controversial reform to its glacier protection law early Thursday, giving mining companies a pathway to operate in frozen parts of the Andes that were previously off-limits. The bill was welcomed by investors and condemned in equal measure by scientists and environmental groups.

The Chamber of Deputies approved the amendment with 137 votes in favour, 111 against and three abstentions, following nearly 12 hours of debate. The Senate had already passed the same text in February with a vote of 40 to 31, meaning the bill goes directly to President Javier Milei to be signed into law without returning to the upper chamber.

The reform rewrites the country’s 2010 National Glacier Protection Law. Under the existing framework, a federal scientific body designates which glaciers and periglacial environments are protected from industrial activity. The new law transfers that classification power to individual provinces, meaning 23 different governments, many with direct financial interests in mining, will decide which frozen zones can be exploited and which cannot. Environmental lawyers have called the shift the core danger of the reform.

The investment case driving the bill is significant. Argentina’s central bank has estimated, based on industry forecasts, that the country could triple its mining exports by 2030. Canadian miner First Quantum has confirmed plans to advance the Taca-Taca copper deposit in Salta, considered among the world’s ten largest undeveloped copper projects, with an initial investment of $4.2 billion. Glencore’s Agua Rica and El Pachón projects, together worth an estimated $13.5 billion in planned spending, were both previously stalled under the glacier law.

There are nearly 17,000 glaciers in Argentina, according to a 2018 national count. In the northwest, where mining activity is concentrated, glacial reserves have already shrunk by 17 percent over the past decade, primarily due to climate change, according to the Argentine Institute of Snow Research, Glaciology and Environmental Sciences. Four United Nations special rapporteurs warned in the weeks before the vote that the proposed reforms would put aquatic ecosystems at risk and threaten access to clean water for communities across the region.

Milei, who does not believe in man-made climate change, has argued that environmentalists “would rather see us starve than have anything touched.” Environmental activist Flavia Broffoni, speaking to AFP outside parliament on Wednesday, rejected that framing. “The science is clear,” she said. “There is absolutely no possibility of creating what they call a ‘sustainable mine’ in a periglacial environment.” The passage of the glacier reform follows Milei’s successful push to loosen labour laws in February, also over sustained street protests.