On November 11th, Argentinian President Cristina Fernández vetoed a previously passed bill aimed at protecting Argentina’s glaciers.

The bill, entitled The Law of Minimum Budgets for the Protection of Glaciers and Periglacial Environment, had been passed overwhelmingly despite concerns from governors of affected provinces and Argentina’s Secretariat of Mines that the bill’s provisions would prevent mining development.

The glacier protection bill would have:

1. Established basic standards to preserve glaciers as strategic reserves of hydric resources and water supplies; and
2. Prohibited activities that would prevent the glaciers from acting as water supplies.

Some of the activities that would have been severely curtailed in glacial environments would have been mining (including gold, copper, aluminum, iron and steel, and others), oil and gas exploration and exploitation, general construction activities, and the release of any substances that would have a detrimental effect on glaciers.

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