What is “undone science,” and how does it affect environmental policy and regulation around the world? In a recent study published in Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, Javiera Barandiarán, an associate professor in global studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and colleagues trace how undone science has shaped the conflicts between mining and glacier conservation over the past two decades in Chile. The authors show how missing areas of scientific knowledge, whether absent or contested, allowed significant impacts of mining projects to escape attention.
Undone science refers to research intentionally or unintentionally left unfunded, incomplete or ignored because of political, economic or industry pressure. This term, which is rooted in the field of science and technology studies, can also encompass research that is systematically distorted to generate public ignorance around key policy issues.
In Chile, undone science has been a defining force in the politics of glacier protection. Glaciers in Chile existed in a regulatory blind spot for years: despite being fundamental to the country’s water security, they were often ignored in the early days of environmental impact assessments and regulation. The study by Barandiarán and coauthors explores how undone science has become a central area of contention for policymakers, activists, mining corporations and the state, shifting Chilean glacier management from a question of science to politics.
The authors argue that science can remain “undone” due to three key drivers: a lack of pluralism that excludes certain ways of knowing; a loss of autonomy when scientific agendas are shaped by the interests of powerful funders; and contested validation procedures regarding what counts as authoritative. In Chile, the authors find undone science in the absence of information and the contestation of scientific knowledge, both of which allowed glaciers to remain outside the scope of regulatory concern and environmental review for many years.
The study focuses on two illustrative cases. The first is Pascua Lama, a gold mine in the Andes in northern Chile, whose environmental permit was approved in 2006; and the second is the expansion of Los Bronces, a copper mine just north of Santiago, Chile’s capital, for which the environmental permit was approved in 2023.
In the mid-2000s, the Pascua Lama project became embroiled in scandal when the mining corporation Barrick Gold proposed removing and relocating parts of three glaciers to make room for an open-pit mine. At the time, state authorities said they “really knew nothing” about the glaciers and that it was a new topic for them, providing a classic case of undone science. Public pressure mounted, and the mine was closed in 2020.
In the intervening years, the public response and demonstrations led the state to begin to reckon with the absence of glacier regulation: the first attempt to enact a glacier protection law in Chile was in response to the Pascua Lama project. Other regulatory proposals to protect glaciers were also developed, including the creation of a dedicated glaciology and snow unit within Chile’s General Directorate of Water in 2008 and the country’s first National Glacier Inventory in 2014. The authors note that these steps were not simply a resolution of undone science. The state and regulatory actors’ calls for more science create an assumption that the problem is simply a lack of data, rather than a complex struggle over whose interests control Pascua Lama’s use and shape its production.
In an interview with GlacierHub, Ajit Subramaniam, a research professor and oceanographer at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is part of the Columbia Climate School, described these conflicts, explaining that “often it is not a matter of uncertainty in the science that is confounding to policymakers so much as the difficulty in balancing opposing needs and who has a voice in that decision.”
The two cases illustrate different drivers of undone science. While Pascua Lama faced an absence of knowledge, the expansion of the Los Bronces copper mine faced no lack of data. Instead, undone science had shifted toward contestation over scientific validation.
A major point of contention in the Los Bronces project was the impact of mining dust on nearby glaciers. The particulate matter created by mining activities settles on glaciers, darkening their surface and causing them to absorb more heat and melt faster. Chile’s Environmental Impact Service (SEA) rejected the environmental permit for the expansion and argued that Anglo American, the mining company behind the project, had not accounted for the impacts of dust on the nearby glaciers in their assessment. However, the Committee of Ministers overrode SEA’s rejection and pointed to uncertainty in quantifying those impacts.
Much research exists on the impacts of dust on glaciers, but, as the authors noted, studies have differed in their findings of exactly how much melt can be attributed to mining dust based on methods of analysis, with some attributing 82% of glacier loss to mining and others stating up to a 99% loss. By focusing on these methodological debates, the authors argue, the broader issue of the mine’s impacts on the glaciers was sidelined.
Although state agencies objected to the expansion plan and the permit was rejected, an appeals council overrode those decisions after Anglo American agreed to offset 150% of its air pollution emissions and assured the council that the project had been designed to “not affect any glaciers or protected areas.” As a condition of its approval, the council required Anglo American to model dust impacts from the mine and implement an early warning system for glaciers. The study authors highlight this as showing a strong similarity to the Pascua Lama case, where officials asked for more science to validate their decision.
Relatedly, mining companies have successfully lobbied against protections that would prohibit mining near glaciers, claiming they would end the mining industry in Chile. The authors argue this is a false choice, and that pitting economic growth against glacier protection misrepresents the stakes. If glaciers disappear, the supply of water needed for agriculture, industry and communities across the country will be severely reduced.
The two cases reveal a transformation in what drives undone science and how it operates. At Pascua Lama, a mining corporation sought to physically remove glaciers while the state lacked the regulations and data necessary to reject the project proposal. At Los Bronces, the expansion of the mine posed less immediate harm to the glacier than the mining dust that would cause accelerated glacier melt over time—and evidence of this existed, but the interpretation of the science was contested in ways that hindered strong regulatory action. In both cases, undone science was a product of political and economic interests that shape what gets studied, disputed and ignored.
Even as glaciological data has grown, instances of scientific uncertainty and debate are being used to delay protections or justify environmentally unsafe projects. In other words, more research and better science will not automatically lead to stronger environmental protections, so long as the forces that keep certain science undone, or strategically contested, remain in place.
