Argentina, a pioneer in glacier protection, is moving forward with a reform that threatens water security
The country pushed for glacier conservation in 2010, and Congress is now responsible for defending the law and preventing any rollback of those protections
Argentina is not only known for its incredible landscapes and biodiversity, but also for its environmental legislation. The Glacier Law, ratified 15 years ago thanks to pressure from scientists, civil society organizations, and citizens, became the first law in the world to protect glaciers and the periglacial environment by declaring them public goods essential for the country’s freshwater supply.
Argentina has nearly 17,000 cataloged glaciers across 12 provinces, feeding 36 river basins over nearly 400,000 square miles. Together with the periglacial zone, they form Argentina’s strategic freshwater reserves for both present and future generations.
The first article of the Glacier Law establishes that there are “minimum budgets for the protection of glaciers and the periglacial environment in order to preserve them as strategic reserves of water resources for human consumption; for agriculture and as providers of water for the recharge of hydrographic basins; for the protection of biodiversity; as a source of scientific information and as a tourist attraction.”
However, next week the Senate will discuss a bill to reform the law that is, quite simply, an affront to the rights of Argentines, as it seeks to compromise the water security of the population by leaving a large part of these ecosystems unprotected.
The proposed amendment is unconstitutional and sets a dangerous precedent in terms of violating rights won by civil society to protect the common goods of Argentines. It violates Article 41 of the National Constitution, the precautionary and preventive principles established in the General Environmental Law, and the principle of non-regression in environmental matters recognized in the Escazú Agreement.
The proposal would shift to the provinces the power to decide which glaciers and which parts of the periglacial environment should be classified as having “relevant hydrological function” and therefore protected. This breaks with the national, uniform nature of Argentina’s minimum environmental standards and opens the door to uneven, purely administrative criteria lacking scientific rigor, for water systems that do not recognize political boundaries between provincial jurisdictions. As a result, the protection of these ecosystems would depend on decisions shaped by political interests and expediency rather than environmental science.
Argentina already has a pioneering law that protects glaciers and the periglacial environment, which it should be proud of as it safeguards a finite, indispensable resource for present and future generations: freshwater.
However, they want us to believe that the current law is an “impediment” to development or that it is “poorly drafted or defined.” Protecting glaciers is a state policy that Argentine society pushed for in 2010 and that the Supreme Court of Justice ratified in 2019. And now it is up to Congress, through its representatives, to defend the law and prevent any rollback. Protecting glaciers is not about hindering development: it is about ensuring that the country has enough water to sustain it.
Regressive reforms to the Glacier Law will not only jeopardize the future of Argentina’s water, it will also erode the very foundations of the legal certainty it claims to promote. The Glacier Law doesn’t need reform: it needs to be enforced. We hope that Congress will honor the commitment it made 15 years ago when it enacted a law that is a model for the world and that it will not allow any setbacks that will compromise the well-being of all Argentines.
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