Argentina's President Javier Milei is considering a policy change that would revise the country's glacier protection law, potentially facilitating expanded copper mining in areas currently restricted under existing regulations.
Milei plans to request congress make a fundamental review of Argentina's glacier protection legislation known as Glaciers Law, he said at a market event that was broadcasted online on 14 November. The law, among other restrictions, forbids mineral exploration and extraction within the glaciers' perimeter, which is currently set by the Argentinian institute of nivology, glaciology and environmental sciences (IANIGLA) based on unclear criteria, Milei said.
The IANIGLA's legal text currently states that a glacier is "any stable or slowly flowing perennial ice mass, regardless of shape, size, or conservation state, including rocky debris and internal or surface water courses," adding that its perimeters are frozen or ice-saturated soils that help regulate water resources.
"The glacial perimeters are not well defined," Milei said, "and because they are not well-defined, the environmentalists rather [Argentina] to starve than to come close to the glaciers."
The president wants to transfer the authority to set perimeter boundaries to the provincial governments, claiming that the glaciers' areas are too large, which blocks — in Milei's words — Argentina's "God-given" resources and curtails the country's mining prowess.
"It seems to me that it would be better for each province to determine which areas are considered glacier zones," Milei said. "We could finally start taking advantage of the natural resources that have been made available to us."
By giving provincial governments the authority to define glacier perimeters, it could become easier to identify which areas are truly off-limits, providing greater legal certainty for foreign companies considering investment in Argentinian mining. Provinces could also effectively reduce the size of protected glacier areas, expanding the land available for extraction.
Several copper resources located near the Andes and its glaciers could be unlocked by the change, increasing Argentina's timid copper output. Despite having 116mn metric tonnes of copper resources, it was only able to export $4bn of the metal last year — while Chile, which is located on the other side of the Andes, sold $50bn, according to Milei.
It is unclear how much copper is under glacial perimeters, but major copper projects in the San Juan province — BHP/Lundin's Vicuña and Glencore's El Pachón — are located near glaciers and could be benefited by major resource increases if the policy is changed.
The law change, combined with the country's federal investment incentive program (RIGI) — which offers tax breaks and 40-year legal stability for large-scale projects such as new mines — could attract more foreign investment and lead the way for new mining developments in Argentina.
Rio Tinto only bought its way into Argentina because of the country's newly-established legal stability guarantees, its former chief-executive Jacob Stausholm said.
Proposals to change the Glacier Law are not new and have always had staunch backlash from environmental agencies, such as Greenpeace, which said this would be opening a path to destroy most of Argentina's glacial environment, putting the country's water security at risk. The glacier's meltwater regulates rivers all across the country and serves as the primary feedstock for several agricultural projects.
"We will not allow them to touch the Glaciers Law. And we will not support them issuing a sentence against the Argentinian glaciers," Greenpeace said.
