Glaciers, Wetlands, Technology and Law: A Path Toward Awareness

1. The World We Want to Preserve

There are places on the planet where silence has weight. Where white covers everything and the only visible trace is the footprints of those who dared to venture there. Places that existed long before us, and which—if we rise to the occasion—will exist long after.

Glaciers are precisely that. They are not merely snow-capped mountains. They are living entities of Earth’s climate history. Every layer of ice stores centuries of information: the composition of the air our ancestors breathed, the temperatures that shaped entire civilizations, and the natural cycles that made life possible as we know it. A glacier is not a pretty landscape to photograph. It is a library of which we are all a part.

And like any library, it is vital and necessary that we protect it for ourselves and the generations to come.

Argentina hosts 47% of the glaciers in all of Latin America. In this sense, the Andes Mountain Range is one of the most important freshwater reserves in the Southern Hemisphere. What accumulates on those peaks during winter is what feeds rivers, sustains crops, and supplies entire cities during summer. This is no metaphor: it is basic hydrology. It is the water that flows from your tap. Yes, it must be said: WATER UNITES US. WATER MAKES US BETTER.

But glaciers are not alone in this story.

Thousands of kilometers from the Andean peaks, where the earth merges with water and the horizon disappears among reeds and birds, there lies another ecosystem just as vital and far less photographed: wetlands. The Pantanal—shared between Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay, with a footprint in northern Argentina—is the largest tropical wetland in the world. Over 150,000 square kilometers of interconnected life, where water is not a resource: it is the operating system of everything that exists within it.

The Iberá Wetlands, in Corrientes, tell the same story in an Argentine key: an ecosystem that regulates floods, purifies water, shelters unique biodiversity, and sustains entire communities—silently, asking for nothing in return, while the decisions affecting it are made far away in air-conditioned offices.

These landscapes are not the romantic past of nature. They are infrastructure. They are the most sophisticated infrastructure in existence, built over millions of years without a single engineer, without a single public works contract, without a single cent of state investment.

The question this article seeks to explore is simple, even if the answer is not: Are we worthy of what we have?

2. Water as the Axis of Everything

If we had to choose a single element connecting glaciers, wetlands, civilizations, and the future, that element would be water.

That is it. Plain, simple, and easy to understand. Water. The only resource that has no substitute, that cannot be synthesized in a laboratory, and that will not arrive on a ship if we run out of what we have.

The water cycle is, in simple terms, the life support system of our planet. Glaciers accumulate it in the heights during winter and release it slowly in summer, feeding rivers that travel thousands of kilometers before reaching the valleys where we live, cultivate, and sustain ourselves. Wetlands filter it, regulate it, retain it when it overflows, and return it when it is scarce. They are the planet's kidneys—and like any kidney, you don't notice them until they stop working.

The problem is that this cycle, which functioned with extraordinary precision for millions of years, is being altered at a speed that nature cannot absorb or process.

Andean glaciers are retreating. This is not an opinion, nor is it ideology: it is measurement. The Echaurren glacier, in the Maipo River basin which supplies the Metropolitan Region of Santiago de Chile on the other side of the mountain range, has lost more than a third of its surface in the last century. The Piloto glacier, a historical reference point for glaciological studies in Argentina, has been in a sustained retreat for decades. When a glacier retreats, there is not just less ice: there is less water available when it is most urgently needed.

And while glaciers shrink, wetlands are filled in. For soy. For livestock. For real estate developments. For everything that the production model finds more profitable than leaving the water where it belongs.

The Iberá has lost surface area in recent decades due to agricultural expansion. The Pantanal suffered fires of unprecedented magnitude in 2020—the worst year on record in its history—with more than four million hectares burned. Four million. To put it in perspective: that is nearly the entire surface area of the Misiones province, consumed in a matter of months.

What does all this mean in concrete terms? It means that the water we take for granted today—tap water, irrigation water, the water of rivers supplying industries and cities—rests on a balance we are breaking faster than we are understanding it.

Water is not infinite. It never was. We live as if we were eternal, immortal, as if nature were a "given" or a "gift" that is simply there. And it is not. It needs—we need—to care for it, to respect it. We need to be humble; after all, we are just passing through... and she will remain... or at least she should... it depends on us.

3. The Human Footprint

Let us reason together through what seems simple. Think about the water we use today.

The water for breakfast. The shower water. The water that irrigates the fields growing the food we buy at the supermarket. The water that cools factory machinery. The water used to process the minerals that end up in our phones. The water generating the electricity powering the screen as we read this article. The water that cools the diffusion columns used by AI.

Water is in everything. And behind every single one of those uses, there is a human decision. An economic, political, or productive decision. Often, a decision made without contemplating the true cost of what was being used.

That is the human footprint on water: not just direct consumption, but all the decisions we make—individually and as societies—that affect the availability, quality, and future of this resource.

And in Argentina, this footprint has names and surnames.

Large-scale mining operates in high mountain areas, often in direct contact with glaciers and periglacial environments. The debate is not new: the Glacier Protection Act enacted in 2010 expressly prohibits mining and oil activities in glaciers and periglacial environments. Yet, its effective implementation has been irregular at best. Major mining projects have been authorized in areas the law itself should protect, shielded by convenient interpretations, regulatory loopholes, and the vast distance between what is written on paper and what actually happens on the mountain. Here, a strong, robust governance structure becomes vital.

The agricultural model advanced over wetlands for decades under a simple logic: flooded land is unproductive land. This logic transformed millions of hectares of wetlands into soy fields and pastures, without measuring the systemic cost of that transformation. A wetland does not produce soy. But it regulates floods, recharges aquifers, shelters biodiversity, and stabilizes the local climate. When it disappears, all of that disappears with it—silently, without headlines, without anyone signing a death certificate.

Disordered urbanization does the same on a different scale. Cities growing over watersheds, gated communities built on wetlands, pavement poured where there was once absorbent soil. Every square meter of concrete is a square meter that can no longer absorb rain, funneling water directly into drainage systems that were never designed for it. The floods we suffer are not merely climatic. They are also the consequence of urban decisions that ignored what was there first.

The human footprint is not evil by definition. Humans use natural resources—we always have, we always will. The problem is not the use itself. The problem is use without awareness of limits, without measurement of impact, without accountability for the consequences. We must adopt a different consciousness. We must stop plundering resources.

And for too long, that accountability carried no price. Pouring effluents, polluting a river cost nothing. Draining a wetland cost nothing. Operating near a glacier cost nothing—or cost so little that it was an irrelevant line item on any corporate balance sheet.

That is changing. Slowly, imperfectly, but it is changing.

The question is whether it is changing fast enough.

4. Technology as a Tool—and as a Mirror

There is a striking paradox that is rarely mentioned in conversations about technology and the environment. And it is time to name it.

Artificial intelligence—the very tool we use today to translate texts, diagnose diseases, design medicines, and predict climate phenomena—consumes water. A massive amount of water. Google alone reported that its data centers consumed approximately 6.100 billion gallons of water in 2023—a 17% increase from the previous year. A large-scale data center can consume up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the annual consumption of a city of 10,000 to 50,000 people.

This is no minor detail. It is a supreme irony: the very technology that can help us monitor glaciers and protect wetlands is, at this moment, competing for the same resource we want to preserve.

That being said—and it must be stated with the same honesty—technology is also one of the most powerful tools we have today to understand, monitor, and protect the ecosystems this article defends.

AI as an Ally of the Environment

Satellites are no longer just for meteorology or navigation. Today, artificial intelligence algorithms process satellite imagery in real-time to measure glacier surface areas, detect illegal deforestation, monitor wetland levels, and anticipate droughts before they happen. What once required years of field research and manual measurements can now be done from a screen, with a precision no human team could match at scale.

In Argentina, CONICET and organizations like IANIGLA (Argentine Institute of Nivology, Glaciology, and Environmental Sciences) use remote monitoring technology to track the behavior of Andean glaciers. The data they generate is the very data that feeds legislative debates, judicial decisions, and public policies. Without technology, that information simply would not exist.

Predictive AI models also allow us to anticipate the impact of industrial activities on watersheds. A mining company operating near a periglacial zone can—if there is the will and a regulatory framework requiring it—run models simulating the impact of its activity on downstream water availability over the next 10, 20, or 50 years. The technology to do this exists. What does not always exist is the obligation (the consciousness) to do so.

AI as an Uncomfortable Mirror

But technology also forces us to look at ourselves. Only 51% of data center operators monitor their own water consumption, and barely 10% do so in an integrated manner across all their facilities. In other words: the industry building the tools for environmental transparency is, to a large extent, opaque regarding its own footprint.

This is not a minor contradiction. It is a sign that technology, on its own, is not enough. A tool has no values. It has no awareness of limits. It does not sign commitments or answer to a judge. Technology is only as good or as harmful as the human decisions surrounding it.

And that is precisely where the law comes in.

5. Law as a Compass—Or How Ideas Become Conduct

A Greek philosopher said twenty-five centuries ago with a clarity that has not aged: the idea shapes thought, thought shapes action, action breeds habit, and habit shapes conduct.

He was not an environmental philosopher. But he could have been.

Because if there is a problem that perfectly illustrates this chain, it is the relationship between humans and natural resources. For centuries, the dominant idea was simple: nature is there to be used. That idea fostered an extractive way of thinking, which bred predatory practices, which became productive habits, which ultimately shaped the conduct of entire industries, governments, and civilizations.

Environmental law was born precisely to interrupt that chain. To say: this far, and no further. This idea is no longer valid. We need a new one. We need to change.

The Glacier Protection Act—An Idea Still Searching for Its Habit

In 2010, Argentina enacted Law 26,639 of Minimum Standards for the Preservation of Glaciers and Periglacial Environments. It was a milestone. For the first time, the country recognized glaciers as strategic reserves of freshwater and expressly prohibited mining and oil activities in their areas of influence.

The idea was clear. The problem was the path from idea to habit.

The law was partially vetoed before its promulgation. Its regulation took years. The National Glacier Inventory—an express mandate of the law itself—took more than a decade to complete. Meanwhile, mining projects continued operating in zones the law should have protected, shielded by convenient interpretations, regulatory loopholes, and the vast distance between the letter of the law and the reality on the mountain.

This is not a failure of the law. It is a reminder that a law without effective enforcement is merely an idea that never became a habit.

The Wetland Act—The Idea Still Waiting

If the Glacier Act was slow to consolidate, a Wetland Act simply does not exist. At least not yet. There is an urgent need for a dedicated regulatory framework for wetlands, of the same caliber as what the Glacier Act represented.

Since 2013, various bills to protect Argentine wetlands have entered Congress only to die in committee, session after session, legislature after legislature. The 2020 Paraná Delta fires—which destroyed over 900,000 hectares—brought the issue back to the public agenda with an urgency that seemed impossible to ignore. It was debated. Progress was made. And then, it stalled once more.

Why? Because behind every wetland protection bill, there are agricultural, real estate, and political interests that view environmental protection as a threat to their business model. And as long as that view does not change—as long as the idea shaping the thoughts of those actors remains "flooded land is unproductive land"—the legislative habit will remain inaction.

The idea has not yet triumphed over interest. Not yet.

And here I must make a necessary clarification: I am not against mining, livestock farming, or real estate development. These are legitimate, productive, and necessary activities that form part of our productive identity. What I do maintain is that no economic interest should ever stand above the responsibility of preserving the resources that make life itself possible. Awareness and responsibility are not the enemies of development. They are its only long-term guarantee.

Environmental Governance and the Role of Corporations

Carl Gustav Jung spoke throughout his life of the shadow—that part of ourselves we do not want to see, which we deny and project outward. The shadow does not disappear by being ignored. It grows. And eventually, it manifests in the most destructive ways.

Organizations also have a shadow. A corporation that pollutes a river while publishing its sustainability commitments on social media is not hypocritical by accident—it is an organization that has failed to integrate its shadow. It has severed what it does from what it claims to be. It has never completed the Socratic cycle: the idea of environmental impact exists in its documents, but it never became a real habit in its daily decisions.

Corporate environmental governance—ESG, sustainability reporting, climate commitments—represents institutional attempts to complete that cycle. To ensure that the idea of environmental responsibility filters through thought, action, and habit to become genuine organizational conduct.

But there is an immense difference between ESG as marketing and ESG as conviction. And that difference is not resolved by the market alone. It is resolved by the law—when it demands real transparency, when it establishes real consequences, and when it transforms environmental responsibility from an option into an obligation.

The Legal Framework as a Point of Arrival—and Departure

A robust environmental legal framework is not the end of the story. It is the institutionalized habit of a society that has already awakened. It is proof that the idea has traveled the entire path—from thought to collective conduct.

Argentina possesses important components of this framework: the Glacier Protection Act, the General Environmental Act, and Article 41 of the National Constitution, which recognizes the right to a healthy environment. It has institutions, scientists, and data. What it lacks—what it continues to lack—is the political and corporate will to complete the cycle. To transition from idea to habit genuinely, sustainably, and without convenient exceptions.

Because the environment does not negotiate deadlines. It does not grant extensions. It does not care about electoral cycles or quarterly balance sheets.

The glacier melts regardless. The wetland disappears regardless. Water becomes scarce regardless.

With or without a law. With or without good intentions.

The difference lies in what we do while we still have time.

Let us return to that white landscape. To that valley of snow where silence has weight, pierces us, and holds us. To those footprints fading into the horizon. To that question left open, which we can now, after this entire journey, attempt to answer: Are we worthy of what we have?

The honest answer is: not yet. But we could be. We have the science to understand what is happening. We have the technology to measure, monitor, and anticipate it. We have the law—imperfect and incomplete, but present—to frame it. And above all, we have the capacity to change the idea at the root of everything. That idea which for centuries told us that nature was an infinite resource placed at our disposal. It is not. It never was. The glaciers do not belong to us. The wetlands do not belong to us. Water does not belong to us. If anything, we are part of a system that existed long before us and—if we are humble and intelligent enough—will exist long after.

Jung would put it another way: we cannot continue projecting our shadow onto the environment. We cannot continue destroying what we need most while looking the other way. Integration—of who we are, what we do, and the impact we cause—is the only real way out. There is no sustainable development without an integrated consciousness. There is no effective legal framework without genuine conviction behind it. There is no useful technology without responsible human decisions guiding it. The path exists. We build it every time a company decides to go beyond minimum compliance. Every time a legislator prioritizes the long term over the electoral cycle. Every time a citizen chooses to stay informed, form an opinion, and demand consistency.

This article does not pretend to change the world. It has a more modest—and more urgent—aspiration: to offer an idea. Because as a Greek philosopher taught us twenty-five centuries ago, that is where everything begins. From idea to thought. From thought to action. From action to habit. From habit to conduct. And from conduct—if we have the courage to change it—to a world where the glacier remains. Where the wetland stays alive. Where water continues to belong to everyone.

We are in time. Barely. But we are.

IT DEPENDS ON US

This article was conceptualized and directed by Enrique del Castaño, written in collaboration with Claude (Anthropic), and co-edited and verified by Gemini (Google).