While other jurisdictions negotiate with the federal government, Mendoza supports the bill that strengthens the provincial role in identifying protected areas and seeks to provide predictability for mining investment.
By Panorama Minero
The national government has moved forward by submitting to Congress a bill to amend the Glacier Law (Law No. 26,639), with the aim of redefining its operational scope and correcting interpretations that, in practice, have become one of the main barriers to the development of mining projects in Argentina. The initiative, promoted by the administration of President Javier Milei, proposes to strengthen the role of provincial authorities in the identification, delimitation, and assessment of glaciers and periglacial environments, incorporating technical criteria linked to their effective hydrological function.
In this context, the Governor of Mendoza, Alfredo Cornejo, expressed his support for the reform, although from a particular position within the political mining landscape. Unlike other provincial leaders who are engaged in direct negotiations with the federal government over the fine print of the bill, Mendoza is backing the amendment without placing itself at the center of the debate, at a time when the province is undergoing its own process of rebuilding mining activity after nearly two decades of stagnation.
The official bill introduces significant changes from a mining perspective. Among them, it establishes that inventoried geoforms are considered protected until the competent environmental authority verifies that they do not fulfill strategic hydrological functions. Once this condition is confirmed, they are no longer subject to the prohibitions of the law. This point is central for the sector, as it ties protection to verifiable technical criteria rather than to broad or precautionary interpretations lacking specific technical support.
Cornejo emphasized that Mendoza has already been applying, in practice, many of the criteria that the federal government now seeks to formalize. “The law has been in force for 15 years and no project has gone forward because none can get past the interpretive stage of what is considered periglacial. But the procedures that remain under the law and what the Executive Branch has submitted to the Senate are in line with what Mendoza already does in its mining projects,” the governor stated.
From an operational standpoint, he explained that the province systematically consults the Argentine Institute of Nivology, Glaciology, and Environmental Sciences (IANIGLA), which analyzes intervention areas and carries out specific inventories in zones where mining activities are planned. “Mendoza is one step ahead because we are already doing this within the procedures of the Mining Code and in the environmental impact statements approved by the Legislature in 2024 and 2025,” he added.
Mendoza’s position
From a sectoral perspective, the governor’s stance addresses a well-known issue for the industry: regulatory ambiguity has ended up functioning as a structural blockade, even for projects that do not overlap with glaciers or with functionally relevant periglacial environments. “I believe the law is meant to fill an interpretive gap. It is a law that is pour la galerie, because it was enacted 15 years ago and has never been effectively implemented,” Cornejo said, referring to the budgetary, technical, and administrative difficulties that delayed the consolidation of the National Glacier Inventory.
Although the first inventory was presented in 2018 and a partial update for the Desert Andes was published in December 2024, the Central Andes region—where world-class copper mining projects are concentrated in provinces such as San Juan and Mendoza—has yet to be completed. That update is not expected to be finalized until the first half of 2026, a timeframe that is excessive from a mining investment perspective.
On this point, the governor was emphatic in stating that none of the environmental impact statements approved in Mendoza involve glaciers. “None of the projects are located in glacier areas. No one intends to carry out mining or any other activity on glaciers. In periglacial zones, the corresponding studies are carried out to ensure that hydrological functions are not affected,” he said.
In this framework, the provincial government also recalls that the application of these criteria is not merely declarative. During the formation of the Malargüe Western Mining District II (MDMO II), the original list of projects was reviewed and two initiatives were discarded after technical analyses determined that their development could affect areas with the presence of glaciers or sensitive periglacial environments. The exclusion of these projects is presented as concrete evidence that environmental assessment functions as a real filter and that the province does not advance projects that fail to meet the required glacier protection standards.
Support with a Local Focus
From a mining standpoint, Mendoza’s position seeks to distinguish between two levels: on the one hand, support for a reform that provides regulatory predictability, reduces discretion, and aligns environmental regulations with international technical standards; on the other, the need to move forward with the effective establishment of mining activity—a process that only recently began to unlock with the approval of the PSJ Cobre Mendocino project, the only copper operation authorized for production in the province.
In that sense, PSJ appears more as a symbol of a change of phase than as the central focus of the debate on glaciers. The project does not present constraints related to these geoforms, but its approval marked a political and technical turning point in a province seeking to rejoin the national mining map.
Meanwhile, it is expected that Mendoza’s national legislators aligned with the governor will support the reform when the bill reaches the floor of Congress. Such parliamentary backing would be consistent with a position that Mendoza already applies in practice: environmental protection based on technical evidence, respect for provincial authority, and the need to create conditions to attract long-term mining investment.
In a regional context in which Chile and Peru are moving forward with clear regulatory frameworks and legal stability, the discussion surrounding the Glacier Law appears, for Argentina’s mining sector, as a key piece in regaining competitiveness. On that playing field, Mendoza chooses to lend its support without overstatement, with its sights set on consolidating clear rules that allow projects to move from paper to production.
