It was 2021 when a historic law was passed in Argentina to ban salmon farming, considering them a threat to environmental sustainability. Today, however, it seems we are about to take a sensational step backwards: the Parliament of Tierra del Fuego is in fact initiating changes to that law, allowing the introduction of salmon into the rivers and lakes of the province.
The Tierra del Fuego Law effectively prohibited the installation of any type of salmon farming and production in the marine waters and lakes of Tierra del Fuego. Now, according to what Greenpeace Argentina says, the new regulation will allow salmonids to be introduced into the rivers and lakes of the province, with the exception of the Beagle Channel, representing a significant risk of pollution for marine ecosystems.
What once established a historical precedent in environmental issues for Argentina, today opens a new chapter of environmental regression – they say from Greenpeace. Evidence has shown that in areas where salmonids are not native and there are ecosystems of high value and fragility, such as the Argentine Sea, there are serious environmental impacts that are not impossible to avoid.
According to the organization, in short, the scientific evidence is clear: in territories where salmonids are not native species, and in fragile and high-value ecosystems such as those of the Argentine Sea, the environmental impacts are serious and often impossible to mitigate.
Salmon farming, warns Greenpeace, poses a real risk of contamination of the region’s marine and coastal ecosystems, with long-term consequences.
The damage of salmon farms
Nowadays we mention every day what intensive salmon farming actually entails.
Among the most serious impacts:
Many of these effects, environmentalists point out, take decades to repair, when they are not completely irreversible.
Greenpeace’s concerns join those of the Forum for the Conservation of the Patagonian Sea and Areas of Influence, a network that brings together over 30 environmental organizations in the region. The Forum also denounces the change in the law as a clear regression.
According to the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN), the revision of the legislation violates the principle of environmental non-regression, the cornerstone of modern environmental law. Not only that: the decision would also be incompatible with the Escazú Agreement, which imposes binding standards on access to information, public participation and environmental decision-making processes.
For all these reasons, environmental organizations ask local authorities to stop and listen to the voice of citizens, the scientific community and nature itself, for a very clear objective: to avoid projects that conflict with the local economy, culture and identity of Tierra del Fuego, and which risk permanently compromising one of the most pristine and precious ecosystems on the planet.
A choice that does not only concern Argentina, but anyone who believes that environmental protection cannot be sacrificed in the name of an industrial model that has already largely proven to be unsustainable.
