Argentina’s President Javier Milei has taken steps to reform the country’s existing glacier protection law, and the plan is moving fast—too fast, some scientists and legal advocates argue, for something that underpins water security.
In December, he sent a bill to the National Congress of Argentina that loosens environmental protections and opens the door for further mining and industrial activity in glacial and periglacial landscapes. On February 26, 2026, the Argentine Senate approved the bill, with 40 votes in favor, 31 opposed and one abstention. The other house of congress, the Chamber of Deputies, will discuss the change later this month, where it is likely to receive significant support, though its approval is not guaranteed.
The law at the center of the fight—National Law 26.639, the Minimum Standards for the Preservation of Glaciers and the Periglacial Environmental Law, also known as the National Glacier Protection Law—was enacted in 2010. Misryoum editorial desk noted it was seen as a landmark at the time, because it defined glaciers and periglacial landscapes—areas that undergo freezing and thawing, typically located on the edges of either past or present glaciated regions—as public assets and water reserves. Argentina has around 17,000 glaciers that feed watersheds and river flows, and those flows, in turn, support the water supply for millions of Argentinians.
But the law’s promises have never quite matched the on-the-ground reality. Despite the introduction of the law, a 2016 government report found 44 mining projects in glacial and periglacial areas. More have likely begun in the decade since. While the National Glacier Protection Law mandated a National Glacier Inventory to track which areas are protected, the inventory has not been sufficiently funded nor maintained to accurately enforce protection.
This is where the Senate-approved bill changes the direction of travel. The reform passed in February amends the National Glacier Protection Law to allow provinces to individually determine which areas are considered glacial or periglacial, potentially undermining the current stricter definition. It also places decision-making powers about industrial activity in the hands of provincial governments.
Cristian Fernández, a lecturer at the University of Buenos Aires and the legal coordinator at Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, said, “The law is effective because it uses objective scientific data from the National Glacier Inventory to define protected areas.” He added that “[the law] serves as a tool for environmental land-use planning, ensuring that industrial development does not occur in areas where damage to the water cycle would be permanent and irreversible.” His criticism is that shifting away from national standards and toward provincial power could let guardrails be set based on political convenience rather than collective environmental rights. In the courtroom-style world of environmental law, that distinction matters—because once definitions and enforcement fray, it’s hard to put them back together.
Maria Antonia Tigre, director of global climate litigation at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said, “Laws that establish science-based, nationwide minimum standards for the protection of strategic water reserves play an important role in ensuring legal certainty and safeguarding ecosystems in a warming climate.” Any effort to weaken or fragment those protections, Misryoum editorial desk notes, warrants careful scrutiny. Fernández also argued that, “By making the law ‘interpretative,’ the government seeks to retroactively validate mining projects that were previously in violation of the law,” essentially acting as if the original protections never existed. He warned that it creates the potential for scientifically proven ice body water reserves to be removed from the National Inventory.
There’s also the pressure of economics, and you can feel it in the politics even if the arguments are wrapped in environmental language. The reform comes during a period of economic challenges. Since the start of this century, Argentina has battled with high inflation rates, seeing a spike in 2024. Over the past year, through a number of economic policies under Milei, inflation has retreated from that spike, but economic issues remain a major concern, fueling the push for industrial activities such as mining that could promote growth.
Maria Victoria Murillo, a professor of political science and international and public affairs at Columbia University and the director of the Institute for Latin American Studies, said, “Now that inflation has been tamed, the main economic issues [in Argentina] are jobs and poverty…This makes economic growth a priority for the government.” She explained that many provinces of the Andean region believe mining holds potential for economic growth, adding that mining is more capital than labor intensive and as such is not likely to create many jobs—yet the jobs created will be concentrated geographically in those Andean provinces. Misryoum newsroom reported that mining is also very water intensive, and protecting glacial environments limits access to water use for mining. So economic pressures, paired with new provincial power under these reforms, leave glacial environments vulnerable to industrial activity.
In a smaller historical note that’s easy to miss, Fernández pointed out that before 2010, glaciers were only protected if they fell within National Parks, leaving most of these ecosystems—which hold 70 percent of the country’s fresh water—vulnerable to climate change and industrial activities. Argentina was the first country to pass such a law, and now it is under direct attack.
Misryoum analysis indicates the key concern is bigger than one bill. Fernández warns that, “the reform proposed by the current administration sets a negative and dangerous precedent for Argentinian environmental policy.” Glacier protection, he argues, is often treated as national policy—so when politics shifts, protections can too. The Senate vote that weakened a law once considered among the strongest glacier protection systems in the world is, for critics, proof of that pattern. And with the Chamber of Deputies set to take up the change later this month, the question is how quickly—and whether—Argentina will decide to keep or revise its science-based guardrails. Somewhere off in the Andes, a gust of dry air hits stone and shrubs, and you get the feeling the debate isn’t abstract at all—it’s about the water people will notice long before they read the legal language.
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