Environmental NGO Greenpeace on Friday condemned as “a direct attack on Argentines’ water” President Javier Milei’s announcement regarding his intention to amend a law that safeguards the country’s glaciers to enable multi-million-dollar mining investment. In a speech on Thursday, Milei articulated his intention to redefine the legal boundaries of periglacial zones, which Greenpeace asserts are essential for water storage and climate regulation. “The environmental rollback proposed through this amendment will put access to water at risk for millions of Argentines,” stated Agostina Rossi Serra.
The President stated that this law would “allow each province to determine what constitutes a periglacial zone, and the consequence will be a major wave of investment in mining,” shortly after unveiling a bilateral trade framework with the United States that encompasses the extraction of critical minerals. Argentina’s existing Glacier Law, effective since 2010, prohibits activities that may harm glaciers and periglacial regions, including mining and hydrocarbon extraction. Greenpeace asserts that the amendment “would open the door to activities that threaten the integrity of glaciers and their surrounding ecosystems, putting freshwater sources at risk.”
The environmental organisation noted that this could result in “glaciers exposed to a far greater risk of contamination, destruction and disappearance.” However, Milei perceives a potential for wealth within Argentina’s segment of the Andes, the nation’s most extensive mountain range. The President remarked that environmentalists “would rather people starve than touch anything … a primitive way of thinking. The mountain range is being underutilized. We could multiply our exports 12-and-a-half times,” he stated at an event in Corrientes Province, located 900 kilometres north of Buenos Aires, in reference to copper, gold, lithium, and rare earths.
Argentina is among nearly 50 nations globally that possess glaciers. According to the reports, an area of 310,000 hectares is covered by two thousand of them. The “periglacial law” will be included in a series of reforms that the government is implementing to liberalise the economy. Additional items on the agenda encompass labor and tax reform, which the Executive aims to advance in Congress post-December, coinciding with the inauguration of new legislators elected during the successful midterm elections in October.