Hello, I hope everyone has been well.

Today we’ll be discussing the conflict between humans and glaciers. As I was reading about glaciers, I came across this quote which really resonated with me-

“As glaciers are more and more iconized with climate change, everything else about a glacier seems to fall away — their immense diversity and their complexity. Glaciers are increasingly reduced, simplified and detached from environments, from people, from socio-political-cultural processes. Instead, they’re known more for their single association with climate change.”

This quote is from a Ted Idea article by the glaciologist M Jackson, which you can read here.

Many people have many different experiences with glaciers, some positive and some negative. Glacial melting is seen as a good thing by some Icelanders, who feel at ease knowing that receding glaciers would no longer be able to cause damage to them and their homes. There are many stories associated with glaciers, so let me share one with you.

This story is set on the border of Chile and Argentina, where the mining company Barrick Gold started the Pascua Lama project, a mining expedition which was set to remove parts of glacier to get to the gold underneath it. It was a huge expedition, which planned to remove 10 hectares of glacier ice (about 18.7 football fields) with a thickness of 3-5 metres. This had not taken into account the roads that had to be made for access to the mining area which would impact even more glaciers. A glacier the size of a football field, with a thickness of 3 metres holds about 30,000,000 litres of water, enough to sustain a person in Singapore for 582 years, given that Singapore’s per capita household daily water consumption was 141 litres in 2018. Not to forget the fact that glaciers are able to replenish their water stores as more snow falls and compacts on the glacier as mentioned in my previous post. Furthermore, the dust and soot from vehicles around the area had darkened the glacial ice, expediting the glacial melting as the ice absorbs more energy.

In Argentina at that time, there were no laws protecting glaciers. Barrick Gold had only mentioned a few glaciers in its environmental analysis done before starting its work, but Juan Pablo Milana, a glaciologist, had found that there were 50 in the immediate vicinity of the Pascua Lama and several hundred that exist on the access roads there. The number of glaciers around the San Juan province had not been properly researched before. If people did not know these glaciers existed, how could they protect them?  Until 2010, no laws existed to protect glaciers.

From this, we can understand how the lack of awareness can be dangerous for our environment. There are many stakeholders involved in the protection of glaciers. The issue of glacial melting is complex, and from this event we learn how such economic motives can hinder our fight against environmental problems.

I will be discussing more on this issue next week, so until then, stay safe!

References:

Glaciers: The Politics of Ice by Jorge Daniel Taillant