Irreversible Returns: Controversies Over Glacier Geoengineering in Chile
Cristián Simonetti (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)
In light of contemporary geoengineering proposals to mitigate the impact of mining and climate change on glaciers in Chile, this presentation analyses how glacier imageries in relation to human agency have changed among glaciologists in recent decades. It focuses on recent proposals by consultancies and mining companies to relocate glaciers. This effort resonates historically with a mitigation strategy that the mining company Barrick Gold proposed for Pascua Lama, which in 2006 triggered an international controversy that resulted in the world's first draft glacier bill, still under debate in the Chilean Congress, and which subsequently informed a proposal for a new constitution in Chile, rejected in 2022. It argues that the underlying assumption behind glacier relocation initiatives is that glaciers are detachable elements from the landscape, composed of homogeneous and inert ice, the transformations of which are reversible. It concludes by reflecting on conceptions of glaciers arising from earth system science and cryobiology, which conceive them as heterogeneous ecosystems bound to their surroundings, the eventual destruction of which is ultimately irreversible.
Cristián Simonetti is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His work has concentrated on how bodily gestures and environmental forces relate to notions of time in science. More recently he has engaged in collaborations across the sciences, arts and humanities to explore the properties of viscous materials, particularly ice. He is the author of Sentient Conceptualizations. Feeling for Time in the Sciences of the Past (Routledge, 2018) and co-editor of Surfaces. Transformations of Body, Materials and Earth (Routledge, 2020), of a special issue of the journal Theory, Culture & Society entitled ‘Solid Fluids. New Approaches to Materials and Meaning’ (2022) and of Urban Liquefaction. Rethinking the Relationship Between Land and Sea (Punctum, 2025).
Date:
26 June 2025
17:45-19:15 (CEST)
Venue:
Seminar Room S252
Global South Studies Center (GSSC)
Classen-Kappelmannstr. 24, 50931 Köln