Andean Glaciers in Times of Planetary Crisis

Abstract

This special dossier examines how understandings of Andean glaciers transform under the planetary crisis, defined by humanity’s impact on geophysical processes at a planetary scale. Once regarded as remnants of deep geological time, glaciers have become emblematic casualties of anthropogenic global warming, their accelerated melting compressing geological history into human timescales and raising urgent ethical and political questions about protection, mitigation, and loss. This interdisciplinary collection, including contributions focused on Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and the wider region, calls for approaches that move beyond universalizing Anthropocene narratives and toward historically and territorially situated accounts of glacial change, challenging colonial and extractivist frameworks that have long shaped the governance of ice and nature. The introduction argues that dominant scientific and state-centered framings—rooted in objectivity, distant observation, and a physicochemical definition of ice—tend to abstract glaciers into universal, placeless indicators of global change, obscuring the local extractivist and colonial dynamics driving their destruction, particularly through mining of critical minerals for a green energy transition. Against this detached view, the dossier foregrounds situated, relational, and often Indigenous conceptions of glaciers as vital entities embedded in organic, social, and spiritual life.