SANTIAGO, Jun 12 (IPS/IFEJ) - Chile possesses vast freshwater reserves in its glaciers, but lacks laws to protect them. Lawmakers, farmers and environmentalists are calling for legislation to fill that gap.

The reserves are masses of perennial ice, formed by the accumulation of snow, which then slowly flows downhill, pushed by its own weight. Chile's mountain glaciers are essential for environmental and climate stability, the human population, farming and generating electricity.

In Chile, 1,751 glaciers have been identified, and extend across a combined area of 16,860 square kilometres, 65 percent of the surface of the South American ice-cover of some 25,700 square km. But an estimated 5,000 square km have yet to be explored in this country.

According to the Global Water Partnership, 77 percent of the planet's freshwater is frozen at the poles or in mountain glaciers. South America holds 28 percent of that icy resource.

The Global Outlook for Ice and Snow, presented Jun. 4 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), confirms that glaciers around the world have shrunk because of global warming.

The majority of the science community believes that the main cause of climate change is the accumulation in the atmosphere of so-called greenhouse gases released in large measure by human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels.

In 2000, a University of Chile study found that 87 percent of 100 glaciers studied were shrinking due to rising average temperatures. Particularly worrisome was the reduction found in the Patagonian ice, which represents more than 60 percent of the South American glaciers.

But in Chile the glaciers are also threatened by mining activity, particularly in the north. It is estimated that the mountain ice contributes more than 60 percent of the river flow in dry years.

In April, government officials who flew over three glaciers in the northern region of Atacama (where there is a complex water resource problem) saw that mining roads had been built and ditches dug.

According to the General Directorate of Water (DGA), the Copiap� River, fed by those glaciers, is overexploited. Its mean yearly supply is 4,000 litres per second, but demand is 5,500 litres per second.

Ecologist Sara Larra�n explained in an interview for this report that interest in protecting the glaciers surged after the initial approval of the controversial Andean gold mining project of Pascua Lama, on the Chile-Argentina border, of the Canadian transnational Barrick Gold Corporation.

"In the first environmental impact study presented by Minera Nevada, a Barrick affiliate, and approved in 2001, the existence of (three) glaciers was not declared," although they are located next to the mining site, said Larra�n, director of the non-governmental Sustainable Chile Programme.

"Because of complaints from local communities and non-governmental organisations, the company was forced to present a new study, where the glaciers did appear" and which supply the irrigations systems of 70,000 small farmers in Atacama's Huasco Valley, she said.

But the new Barrick study proposed the need to remove the Toro I, Toro II and Esperanza glaciers in order to open-pit-mine the gold and silver deposits there. The project was approved in 2006 with the condition that the ice would not be removed.

Although construction is slated to begin in September 2007, the DGA has already detected significant reductions in the glaciers, a product of preliminary mining work.

In May 2006, five senators -- from the governing coalition and the opposition -- presented a bill in Parliament on evaluating and protecting the glaciers. The proposed legislation is still on its way through the legislative branch.

Meanwhile, the Sustainable Chile Programme and the National Society for Agriculture (SNA) drafted another bill, with input by public agencies and private companies.

The National Society of Mining rejected it, saying that existing environmental law "provides sufficient guarantees for the protection of the glaciers, and it is preferable to study it on a case-by-case basis," the society's president, Luis Schmidt, said in an interview for this report.

In October, the bill was presented to the administration of President Michelle Bachelet with the intention of obtaining her sponsorship. If that is not possible, its backers ask that the text already in the Senate be taken up urgently, to which aspects of the farmers' and ecologists' bill have been added.

Both draft laws establish which activities are allowed, restricted or banned in glacier areas. They also propose the creation of a national council, with public and private sector representation, which would set up an official registry to monitor the state of the glaciers and to prepare standards for conservation.

Larra�n believes the mining industry -- particularly the state-run National Copper Corporation, responsible for most of Chile's revenues and accused of damaging a glacier in the country's central region -- is exerting a great deal of pressure against the non-governmental version of the bill.

The director of the Latin American Observatory for Environmental Conflicts, Lucio Cuenca, expressed his fears that a "bad bill" will end up being passed, legalising the destruction of Chile's glaciers.

(*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS - Inter Press Service, and IFEJ -- the International Federation of Environmental Journalists.) (END/2007)