The public hearing for the reform of the Glacier Law is already a record with more than 85,000 people registered to participate and defend water sources. However, from La Libertad Avanza they changed the participation criteria and intend to limit exposure to just a maximum of 180 people each daythat is to say, only 0.4% of the total.
The maneuver reveals what socio-environmental organizations have denounced from the beginning, there was never a real intention to open an instance of participationbut to formally comply with the requirement to avoid possible prosecutions. Now, overwhelmed by the massiveness, they advance with an “express” audience on the 25th and 26th that excludes 99.6% of those who signed up, which continues to be grounds for prosecution.
A tailored audience
The presidents of the Natural Resources commissions, José Pelucand Constitutional Affairs, Nicolás Mayorazannounced before the closing of registration that those who could not present would have the possibility of sending videos or writings. The proposal changes the initial criteria of the call and is a violation of the Hearing mechanisms to limit it to just two days. But if only 10,000 people of the more than 85,000 registered sent their videos, it would be necessary 104 eight-hour days to see them all. However, the intention of the LLA bloc is that after two days a commission will be called to rule.
In other words, there are no guarantees that the materials sent by all those left out be read before deputies make a decisionfar from being a real part of the debate. Public hearings, inherently non-binding, already have obvious democratic limits. But in this case the problem is greater, since They do not even allow the effective participation of those who registeredwhich makes the process irregular and illegal.
Faced with this situation, different organizations gathered in the Campaign The Glaciers Law is Not Touched They reject the mechanism by rigging the sending of videos and writings, they prepare days of protest for the 25th and 26th, and they demand that expand the audience with presentations in judicial instances.
Judicial protections and massive rejection
In these days they presented protection actions with the demand that the right to participate be respected.
On the one hand, a joint presentation is being promoted by the Right to the City Observatory, the We Are the City Movement, Nature of Rights and the Institute of Thought and Public Policies. On the other hand, Environmental Lawyers, FARN, Greenpeace, the University Network for the Climate Crisis and the Environmental Policy Circle also resorted to Justice.
Organizations demand that ensure oral participation of all registered people, who the number of days is expanded of hearing to make it possible, that mechanisms that restrict access to speech are avoided and that the process effectively complies with conditions of publicity, transparency and real participation.
This is appropriate, when the number of registrants exceeds the planned capacity, the audiences must be expanded and there are clear precedents.
The contrast with other debates
In 2018, during the process of legalizing the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, the government of Mauricio Macri enabled a process with 15 audiences and 738 exhibitors. The process had strong limitations and a biased composition of guests, but the days lasted for eight weeks. In that case, where the women’s lives and autonomy were at stake, there was no rush in the decision that could have prevented hundreds of deaths a year from clandestine abortions.
Today, however, when it comes to modifying a law won in 2010 after years of socio-environmental struggle, the Government seeks to speed up the process. To expand rights, they delay. To cut them, they hurry.
What’s at stake
The Glacier Law protects the strategic water reserves that feed more than 35 rivers in at least 20 provincesmany of them in shared basins.
The modification implies leaving the decision on which glaciers and periglacial environments to protect in the hands of provincial governments, enabling a greater advance of extractive activities on sensitive territories.
Furthermore, the exclusion of native communities from this process violates their constitutional right to prior, free and informed consultationestablished in Convention 169 of the ILO and your right to decide on your territory established in article 75, paragraph 17 of the National Constitution.
A government that attacks environmentalism
These days, President Javier Milei once again attacked environmentalism in his speech at the Córdoba Stock Exchange, where he spoke of a supposed “environmentalism.” extreme and idiotic“that he doesn’t want to touch anything and that leads to death.
Between “not touching anything” and “destroying everything”, the only two options that he understands as possible, he bets on the second without any hesitation. And that’s what brings us to hunger, disease, death, crises, genocide and wars in an increasingly decomposed capitalism. On the contrary, environmentalism is a commitment to life, to another way of producing where private profit is not the rule but rather collective interest, and where water and glaciers are neither a commodity nor a cost variable, but common goods guaranteed as an elementary right.
Likewise, Milei once again mentioned Chile as a great example of the exploitation of the mountain range. There, opportunely, just a week after the government took office, the socio-environmental organizations called for mobilize this March 22World Water Day, in the face of the extractive offensive promoted by José Antonio Kast.
A broader offensive and the need to unify the fights
The advance on the glaciers does not appear isolated. It is part of a broader package of measures that aim to put the territory, common goods and knowledge at the service of business interests. This was published by Adorni in his X account where he mentions the modifications to the Land Law and the Fire Management Law—which open the door to greater foreignization and concentration of the territory—, in addition to the attack on university financing and the Disability Law.
The Government is advancing on multiple fronts with part of the same objective: Discipline workers, cut rights, empty science and public universities to deepen the extractivist model.
Faced with this, since Environmental Red Alert We raise the need to unify the struggles and prepare a great day of mobilization when the modification of the Glacier Law is discussed, coming together with all the sectors in conflict.
Because this attack occurs in a context of social conflict, with teachers in struggle in different provinces, university strike, mobilizations of retirees every week and workers’ conflicts like that of FATE. It is no coincidence that one of the centers of protest is Catamarca, a province traversed for decades by mega-mining, where the promised “development” never arrived but the consequences are experienced with greater inequality, poverty and dry rivers.
In a government that is increasingly questioned and plagued by corruption allegations like $Libra, if social discontent is not yet expressed on a massive scale, it is the responsibility of the union leaderships that support a government in fall. Given this, it is key to redouble the offensive from below. The defense of glaciers cannot be thought of in isolation, it is part of a more general fight for territory, rights and another country model.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
