Insights on environmental policy by comparing the national laws of native forests and glaciers in Argentina

To design effective national policies for action against climate change is one of the great challenges of our time. In federal and decentralized countries, there is an additional complexity: such policies must be accepted, adopted, and implemented by the provinces, which are sovereign over their natural resources. From the comparative study of two key national environmental laws in Argentina, the National Law of Native Forests (LNBN) and the National Law of Glaciers (LNG), we ask: what are the necessary conditions for a national environmental policy to be adopted and implemented by provincial jurisdictions? We argue that the LNBN, unlike the LNG, was adopted and implemented by the provinces because it follows a vision of sustainable development, establishes mechanisms for the distribution of competences between the national and provincial states and proposes concrete incentives that encourage provincial involvement.