‘Every drop of water counts’: Fear for Argentina’s glaciers

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“Without water, there would be no wine,” Virginia de Valle says as she takes me around her family’s 16-hectare (40-acre) vineyard in Mendoza, nestled below the peaks of the Andes mountain range.

Winemakers in Argentina’s wine capital rely on fresh water from the Andes mountains to irrigate their crops. But after Argentine MPs this week passed government reforms to loosen the protection of glaciers, De Valle fears her vineyard’s water supply is under threat.

“The Andes mountains, with their winter snow and glaciers, feed the rivers and streams that flow into the valley to irrigate our crops,” she explains. “This is also the water we consume in our homes. That is why people say ‘Mendoza is the daughter of water’.”

While snow in the Andes mountains is the primary source of water for Mendocinos, in years with especially low rain and snowfall, water from melted glaciers (permanent bodies of dense ice) helps to minimise the impact of droughts – increasingly common in Mendoza – and keep vineyards like De Valle’s fruitful.

“Every drop of water counts,” she says.

It’s not just the semi-arid province of Mendoza that relies on glaciers for water security. There are 16,968 glaciers in Argentina, providing water to 36 river basins across 12 provinces, home to seven million people.

How has the glacier law changed?

Argentina was the first country in the world to have a law that specifically protected its glaciers. Passed in 2010, the law deemed them to be vital water reserves, and so prohibited any damaging commercial activity.

It also protected what’s known as the periglacial environment, which includes things like permafrost – water trapped in frozen soil. Glaciers are recorded on a national inventory by the Argentine Institute of Snow Research, Glaciology and Environmental Sciences (Ianigla).

It will now be the responsibility of the provincial governments to decide whether or not the glaciers in their region are of strategic importance – that is, whether they provide water for human consumption, agriculture, biodiversity, as a source of scientific information, or as a tourist attraction.

If provinces deem that they’re not “strategic” water reserves, they can take them off Ianigla’s national inventory, meaning they will no longer have those environmental protections.

Those in favour of the changes say the 2010 law acted as an unnecessary barrier to extraction projects, and that the development of copper and lithium projects will boost regional economies and the country’s energy transition.

But those against say large-scale mining could alter the flow of rivers coming from the Andes mountains and threaten water security for millions.

‘Hands off the glaciers’

From the vineyards of Mendoza, to the hiking town of El Chaltén in Patagonia, opposition to the modifications is clear, with the campaign slogan: “Los glaciares no se tocan” – hands off the glaciers – sprayed across the country’s walls and pavements.

More than 100,000 people signed up to participate in a public hearing on the changes at Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies in March, though only a fraction of that – less than 400 – were able to speak over the two-day hearing.

“It made clear that it’s not just environmental organisations who were asking for this law not to be amended; it was the people, the public, who were asking for water to continue to be protected,” says Agostina Rossi Serra, a biologist working with environmental group Greenpeace.

An economic opportunity?

President Javier Milei sees the Andes mountains as the key to unlock billions in investment from mining companies, and the governments of mineral-rich provinces say that the previous law stopped them “promoting a sustainable economic development”.

“Argentina doesn’t export even a single gram of copper, while Chile, which shares the same mountain range with us, exports $20bn [£15bn] a year,” Milei – keen to take a metaphorical chainsaw to government regulation – told a business forum in November.

De Valle counters that “Milei doesn’t care about natural resources or how it’s going to end”.

Bosses from mining firms Glencore, Lundin and BHP Group have all visited Milei in the last year and, along with others, are keen to invest around $40bn in Argentina’s untapped copper industry, according to a Bloomberg report.

Some of the regional governments that were keen to see the law amended, including those of Mendoza and San Juan, are from arid and semi-arid areas where water is already a scarce resource, Serra says.

“They are provinces that believe mining development is far more important than ecosystems and the communities themselves,” she tells the BBC.

‘False arguments’

Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, says the reform means only glaciers and periglacial environments proven to have a water-related significance will be protected, paving the way for development projects on the rest.

But glaciologist Lucas Ruiz says the amendment is based on “false arguments”.

“The most false part of it all is the claim that there are glaciers that do not contribute to rivers. If it’s a glacier, it has ice and contributes water. It’s very basic,” he says.

Ruiz says the reforms to the law are unclear, and so are the consequences.

“We are left not knowing what criteria will be used, not knowing which technical bodies will be involved, and clearly, any glacier and any periglacial environment could be at risk,” he says.

‘A stark paradox’

But Ruiz, who works as an independent researcher at Ianigla, says there’s a “stark paradox” in the scientific community’s response to the reforms.

“We know that at the rate at which glaciers are melting, it is highly likely that by the end of the century Europe will be almost entirely glacier-free, as will the tropical Andes in Peru and large areas of the Southern Andes,” he explains.

“And the only way to prevent that is for us to reduce our carbon footprint. And if we do not make the energy transition, which cannot be achieved without more copper and lithium, it will not be possible.

“It is a stark paradox, hard to accept, but it is the reality. Because the message from science is that energy transition is necessary,” Ruiz says.

Any mining must be responsible, he adds, where the impact on glaciers and the periglacial environment is thoroughly assessed.

‘Race to deregulation’

But Greenpeace fears the lure of financial investment will incentivise provinces to be more lenient on which glaciers are protected.

“If I have an international company looking for a place to develop a project, I’ll probably choose the province with the fewest environmental restrictions. That’s the concern we’re going to face,” Serra says.

On the other side of the debate, Federico Palavecino, a lawyer in Buenos Aires who advises mining projects on the glacier law, says it’s right that the provinces decide how to protect their own glaciers, as they’ll be dealing with the consequences if things go wrong.

“Why should we tell them how to live?” he asks.

He argues that removing barriers to multi-million dollar projects could bring vital cash to the communities who need it.

Meanwhile in Mendoza, Virginia de Valle is making a point of talking to visitors to her family’s vineyard about the changes to the law. “It will affect wineries, but first, it will affect life,” she says.