How can we listen to the voices of glaciers to save ourselves from melting
Argentina’s glaciers are in danger. Historically, they have been protected by the Glaciers Law, which establishes protections for ice bodies and safeguards water resources.
Argentina’s glaciers are in danger. Historically, they have been protected by the Glaciers Law, which establishes protections for ice bodies and safeguards water resources. The law forbids mining and the extraction of oil or gas in areas where frozen sources of freshwater exist.
However, due to lobbying by mining companies (six are leading the efforts), oil companies, and some local governors, President Javier Milei has pushed a reform bill in Congress that hollows out that federal protection. More specifically, it would allow projects to be carried out on glaciers and in the territories that make them possible through an administrative procedure under the control of each provincial government. Beyond the danger they pose to glaciers, the actions of the Milei administration also represent a direct threat to the health of 39 rivers, whose basins sustain life for 7 million people. Half of those rivers originate in the Andes and cover hundreds of kilometers.
We are part of the basins we inhabit, and water is inscribed in our material existence. What we touch, what we eat, what we drink—all depend on water availability, and there is no human infrastructure capable of replacing ice as a source of water.”
Argentina relies on Andean glacial systems
In total, one out of every five people in Argentina depends on the water that flows down from the Andes. This is not only the water Argentines drink; it is also the water that enables all human activity, including the cultivation of food later distributed throughout the country. We are part of the basins we inhabit, and water is inscribed in our material existence. What we touch, what we eat, what we drink—all depend on water availability, and there is no human infrastructure capable of replacing ice as a source of water.
Usually, when someone says “water is life,” they refer to biological survival. But water does not merely give life—it propels it. It imprints rhythm and movement on everyday existence. The construction of cultural identity relies on the health of the ecosystems and territories that surround a people. These peoples depend on water, and when a glacier dies, we also lose the possibility of identities enduring. The death of a glacier marks a civilizational failure in the human relationship with deep time. Organic ruins remind us that the past was real, that there was a world before us.
The accelerated loss of the Andean cryosphere due to the climate crisis has reduced both the availability and the stability of water, directly affecting basins that rely on glaciers, snow, and periglacial environments. This situation has worsened the structural water stress faced by most of Argentina.
A broader pattern at work
The reform approved by Milei is part of a broader wave of setbacks in water governance in Argentina, including privatizations and the dismantling of many state structures and institutions. Over the past two years, national water policy has actively supported the erosion of state institutions in order to place decision-making power over the web of life in a few private—and mostly foreign—hands. The control of the Paraná basin and the hydroelectric plants that govern water management in Patagonia provide just two examples of this pattern.
But glacier retreat is global, and its implications for freshwater availability are irreversible, especially in regions that cannot depend on local rainfall. The latest global “State of the Cryosphere” report confirms that damage is occurring far faster than expected. This acceleration directly impacts global water systems by disrupting seasonal regulation, leading to a steady decline in access to water.
History, culture, ecology
The work of Colombian researcher Elían Castellanos Ruiz shows that ice is part of the cultural and spiritual heritage of many territories. Through situated cultural practices, it becomes possible to attune one’s ear and listen to the words of the past. As glaciers turn into water, they release and narrate their own stories. Ice also holds the memory of the non-human lives that once walked these worlds.
A glacier is never the same being—it endures through constant processes that make its existence an ongoing phenomenon of re-existence. As fragments of the past melt into water, the present solidifies elsewhere.”
How do Argentine cultures connect and co-evolve in reciprocity with bodies of ice and their waters? What part of our identity is lost if the Andes are destroyed? The range stretches across more than 7,000 kilometers, with hundreds of mountain peaks hosting an enormous diversity of high-mountain life. Glacial ice involves a sense of deep time and shelters soils, sands, and organic matter that can be thousands of years old—a geological timescale. Within the ice crystals, bacteria, algae, fungi, and viruses hibernate. Some of these microorganisms are potentially dangerous to a global web of life that has forgotten how to defend itself against them.
A glacier is never the same being—it endures through constant processes that make its existence an ongoing phenomenon of re-existence. As fragments of the past melt into water, the present solidifies elsewhere. A glacier resembles a colossal ship of Theseus flowing toward cities that orient themselves toward its snowy peaks—a relationship with territory that shapes not only bodies but identities. The Andes compose who we are as Argentines. As environments change, so do dimensions of culture, which is built and rebuilt in constant synergy with its surroundings.
And like a glacier, if a culture stops moving, it too can die. Castellanos Ruiz quotes a teacher who told her, “Not only are glaciers melting—we are melting too.”
Toward an ethics of care
Confronting the disappearance of the Andean glaciers means anticipating our grief for what will be lost. Even the earth itself—the stones shaping the Andes mountain range—moves again. So does our relationship to disappearance, to mourning, to continuity.
Moreover, how do we imagine an ethics of care that includes frozen bodies beyond conservation? Castellanos Ruiz proposes glacial care: “A care that involves not only humans, but entire peoples, thinking of ourselves as Nature through an expanded care. It emerges from local networks that sustain daily life, including the gathering of peoples around glaciers, around life.”
All that is beyond the more-than-human struggles, like us, to re-exist in the world we share.”
What do glaciers have to tell us? How can we learn to listen to deep time and absorb the lessons that could change our culture? “It begins by grounding ourselves in our natural bodies and allowing ourselves to be Nature—in reciprocity, tension, conflict, and harmony—understanding the expansion that we are and the networks that bind us,” Castellanos Ruiz proposes.
Argentina and the world at large need systems that incorporate nature’s memories and build them into our governance. We can bring other pasts into the present we need. By inscribing care for what lies beyond the known—from the depths of the sea to the heart of glacial ice—into the collective unconscious. All that is beyond the more-than-human struggles, like us, to re-exist in the world we share.
