Mining the Andean Cryosphere

the case of Veladero Project

Abstract

This article examines the socio-environmental and territorial implications of large-scale mining in the Andes, through the case of the Veladero project in San Juan, Argentina. It investigates how state development strategies, transnational geoeconomic interests, and plural conceptions of nature interact within a high-mountain socioecological system composed of mining infrastructure, glacial and periglacial environments, glacier-fed watersheds, downstream communities, and regulatory and scientific institutions. The article argues that Veladero reveals a tension between raison d’État, expressed in policies that prioritize investment, exports, and mineral production, and raison de système, understood not as an autonomous environmental imperative but as a strategic orientation that incorporates the interdependencies, feedback effects, and long-term vulnerabilities generated by decisions taken within complex socioecological systems. The theoretical framework combines neo-extractivism, the distinction between raison d’État and raison de système, Southern epistemologies, and climate justice. Based on a qualitative case study and documentary analysis, the findings show that the extractive coalition formed by state agencies and transnational corporations possesses greater institutional and material capacity than the fragmented actors that articulate systemic concerns, including scientific institutions, courts, affected communities, environmental organizations, and glacier-protection legislation. Extractive expansion is therefore a dilemma not for capital accumulation in itself, but for public authorities and societies confronted with confronted with the tension between short-term economic gains and the long-term reproduction of water security, ecological resilience, and territorially embedded ways of life.