A bill to protect mountain glaciers and surrounding land in Argentina from mining concerns and other encroachment is still struggling for full approval.
The initial stage of the bill has been approved by parliament and now its 12 articles have to be debated individually before it goes back to the Senate for a final vote. The Senate has already approved unanimously a different version of the bill.
It will mean that all of Argentina’s glaciers will be considered as ‘strategic reserves of water resources’ and public property.
The law was first proposed in 2008 but was vetoed by President Cristina Kirchner who said the law threatened the economic development of mineral rich provinces such as San Juan, where the world’s biggest gold producer, Barrick Gold, is building a large mine high in the Andes mountains.
Her administration now favours the Senate version over the House of Deputies’. There are differences in how land surrounding a glacier is defined.
The new glacier bill bans ‘mining and oil extraction’ around the mineral rich watersheds of glaciers. The bill sets standards for the protection of glaciers and surrounding periglacial areas and lays out a system of penalties for pollution and damage to ice fields.
Deputies, who approved the broad outline of the bill last month, was due to be voted on the details last week but the congressional session had to be abandoned because too many lawmakers were absent from the chamber.
‘They were absent just to play to the interests of Barrick Gold and big miners,’ said Deputy Miguel Bonasso, who spearheaded the bill.
Previous attempts to get it approved were mired with claims that some politians were trying to protect certain private interests amid concerns that a change in designation would benefit some mining companies. Lawmakers initially clashed over the details of the bill, but Bonasso, who split from the government over the 2008 veto, and ruling party Senator Daniel Filmus reached an agreement to merge two slightly different versions of the proposal.
The vetoed glacier protection law raised questions over Barrick’s vast Pascua Lama mine, which straddles the Chilean border at some 5,000 meters above sea level.
The Canadian company has said the project should not be affected if the glacier bill becomes law, saying Pascua Lama’s ore body is not under any ice fields or glaciers.
Environmentalists, who say studies and satellite images show Barrick’s new project is located in a glacial area, criticized Fernandez’s veto of the original law and accused her of pandering to the interests of big business.
The Argentine Mining Companies Group is not in favour of the bill and claimed it is discriminatory that will prevent mining in vast areas of the country. It does not agree with its definition of the term ‘glacier and periglacial area’ and argues that current laws already protect natural resources, especially water.
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