Milei Busy Gutting Argentina's Environmental Laws; Targeting More Mining, More Timber, More Oil & Gas Production [View all]

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Cornejo is an ally of the Argentine president, Javier Milei, who has previously dismissed the climate crisis as a “socialist lie” and believes that the environment should be at the service of the economy in a country where more than half the population lives in poverty.

The push towards mining is just one of the impacts of Milei’s first year in office. In November, Argentina withdrew its negotiators from the Cop29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. For now, the country remains in the Paris agreement, the international treaty that aims to limit global warming to 1.5C compared with pre-industrial levels. Since taking office, Milei has radically shrunk the size of the state, including downgrading the environment ministry to an under-secretariat, while budgets for environmental protection have been reduced.

His “omnibus” reform law, a behemoth consisting of 664 articles aimed at completely redrawing the legislature, included provisions to tear up the laws protecting glaciers and forests. The law was debated for months, during which both provisions were removed, but campaigners fear environmental protections will not stay off the chopping block for long. The package, however, features the Incentive Regime for Large Investments (Rigi), a policy designed to exploit the country’s extensive natural resources. Argentina has the world’s second-largest source of shale gas, in a Patagonia field known as Vaca Muerta (meaning dead cow), and a fifth of the planet’s lithium. Oil exploration is also taking place off its coast.

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For most Argentines, environmental protection is unlikely to rank among their priorities. When Milei took charge, the country was experiencing one of the worst financial crises in the world, with inflation hitting nearly 300%. Inflation has fallen, but poverty and unemployment have increased. In November, an Ipsos poll found just 4% of Argentines put the climate crisis as their main worry, while 49% cited unemployment and 45% poverty and inequality as their chief concerns. “There is no real public debate on this issue,” García says. “As a result of the many decades of economic upheavals in the country, the environment is as little an issue as I have seen in my lifetime.” Sosa says that Milei’s “libertarian wave” has changed the terms of debate, including free discussion of “eliminating all traces of environmentalism”. “In previous years, this would have faced social condemnation and even political backlash,” he says.

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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/dec/11/argentina-javier-milei-what-a-year-under-a-climate-change-denying-president-has-done-for-the-country