AFP
Wed, April 8, 2026
A Greenpeace activist unfurls a banner reading 'Hands off the Glaciers Law' outside Argentina's parliament ahead of a vote by MPs on an amendment watering down glacier protections (Tomás Cuesta)(Tomás Cuesta/AFP/AFP)More
Argentine MPs on Wednesday were set to begin debating a bill promoted by President Javier Milei which authorizes mining in ecologically sensitive areas of glaciers and permafrost.
The amendment to the so-called Glacier Law, which was approved by the Senate in February, would make it easier to mine for metals such as copper, lithium and silver in permanently frozen parts of the Andes mountains.
Argentina is a major producer of lithium, which is critical to the global tech and green energy sectors.
If adopted by the Chmber of Deputies in a vote expected late Wednesday, it will become law once signed by Milei.
The amendment has outraged environmentalists, who say it will weaken protections for crucial water sources.
Greenpeace activists scaled a monument in front of Congress at dawn on Wednesday and unfurled a banner urging lawmakers "not to betray the Argentine people."
Seven people were arrested, AFP reported.
Diego Salas, communications director for Greenpeace Argentina, told AFP that the amendment was not only a "betrayal of Argentines" but "a betrayal of humanity because glaciers protect us, they give us life."
There are more than 16,000 glaciers in Argentina.
In the northwest of the country, where mining activity is concentrated, glacial reserves have shrunk by 17 percent in the last decade, mainly due to climate change, according to the Argentine Institute of Snow Science, Glaciology and Environmental Sciences.
- Support from governors -
Milei argues the bill is necessary to attract large-scale mining projects.
According to a Central Bank projection, Argentina could triple its mining exports by 2030.
"Environmentalists would rather see us starve than have anything touched," Milei said when announcing the amendment.
Supporters of the amendment argue that it will clear up ambiguities in the current law.
"We want legal certainty, we want clear definitions," Michael Meding, director of the Los Azules copper mining project in San Juan, told AFP.
The reform has the backing of governors from the Andean provinces, who would have greater latitude to green-light mining projects.
Enrique Viale, president of the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers, told AFP that the reform threatened the water supply of "70 percent of Argentinians."
Under the current law, he said, "a scientific body determines the location of glaciers and periglacial environments."
Under the amendment, their location would be "a discretionary decision for each province."
Researchers predict melting glaciers may threaten future water security
Warming temperatures driving prolonged ice loss, study finds
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Glaciers in High Mountain Asia — a region encompassing the Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding mountain ranges — are shrinking rapidly, endangering water resources for millions of people, suggests a new study.
Using satellite data from NASA’s GRACE missions, results show that these extensive glacier systems, often called the “water towers of Asia,” experienced significant losses in mass between 2002 and 2023. These findings reveal that if the extreme conditions that led to this decline continue, enhanced glacier melt could intensify short-term flood risks and substantially reduce long-term meltwater availability. The researchers say the findings underscore the need for reduced greenhouse gas emissions to stave off glacier melt and preserve a larger fraction of the region’s cryospheric water storage.
Because communities in the area often rely on the glacier’s large meltwater stores for hydropower generation, renewable energy and large-scale irrigation systems, any changes in glacier size will have direct implications for local water security, agriculture and natural hazard management, said Jaydeo Dharpure, lead author of the study and a former postdoctoral research associate at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at The Ohio State University.
“Decreasing glacial mass change can threaten infrastructure and increase the risk of loss of life,” he said. “While some ice losses and major disturbances are inevitable, glaciers play an important role for people living beside them, so learning to better monitor their evolutions is a must.”
The study was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.
There are currently more than 95,000 glaciers located in High Mountain Asia, most of which are spread across about 15 sub-regions, or smaller ecological areas.
To better grasp the extent of mass loss from these critical glaciers, researchers examined changes in Earth’s gravity field to determine how much frozen water was lost or added to the glaciers each year. Machine learning models were also used to address mission gaps in long-term glacier monitoring. In all, the team found that while water and ice loss steadily went up throughout the years, there was pronounced melt variability across certain subregions.
Eastern Kunlun, for example, a mountain system that lies between the Tibetan Plateau and the Tarim Basin in western China, gained ice over the last few decades, but West Tien Shan, a mountain range that stretches in the opposite direction, did experience rapid mass losses.
According to the study, the differences in outcomes for these subregions could have been caused by rising global temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, or even radiation emitted by the sun. But while challenging to study, because the glacier system in High Mountain Asia significantly influences global climate regulation, using new techniques to understand how the region reacts to these drivers as a whole is potentially one of the best ways future scientists can create more accurate global climate models, said Dharpure.
“This is important work, because if these glaciers vanish in the future, downstream communities won’t just experience drinking or agricultural water shortages,” he said. Instead, melting glaciers would form new, uncharted lakes and rivers that continue to accumulate water, putting nearby communities in jeopardy, he said. “So scientists should be prepared to monitor how dangerous the many issues that disappearing glaciers cause will be for the billions of people they touch,” said Dharpure.
Co-authors include Ohio State’s Ian Howat and Akansha Patel from Texas A&M University AgriLife. This work was supported by Ohio State’s Byrd Postdoctoral Fellowship.
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Contact: Ian Howat, Howat.4@osu.edu
Written by: Tatyana Woodall, Woodall.52@osu.edu
Journal
Scientific Reports
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Future projections of glacier mass change in High Mountain Asia using GRACE and climatemodel data
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