Returning from participating with President Macri at the COP 25 in Madrid, Argentina's Secretary of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Sergio Bergman, today gave a press conference at the Casa Rosada to summarize the country's advances in environmental policies over the past four years.

"Argentina has fulfilled its Paris Agreement commitments," he said, recalling that President Macri, in taking office in 2015, had immediately instructed that the Paris Agreement be signed, leading to ratification at the United Nations and in both houses of the Argentine Congress, enabling it to become state policy.

"Four years later, Argentina has a national response to climate change, consisting of a Minimum Budget Law on Climate Change," Bergman said. This has allowed "the Climate Change Cabinet, created by President Macri, to become an institution of the Republic, no longer dependent on the position of a government or a party."

Bergman also said that "one of the most important achievements in terms of environment and sustainable development is to have doubled the protected areas of parks and reserves" in Argentina. 

Over the past four years, seven official climate change mitigation plans were developed, which "include sector-specific plans in transport, energy, forests, infrastructure and a national adaptation plan on resilient infrastructure to protect the most vulnerable populations."

Bergman also recalled that his administration had brought back the annual State of the Environment Report, "a constitutional obligation which had not been carried out in 12 years."

"With great pride we can say that we have published the first National Atlas of Glaciers," he added, and listed other achievements, such as the first inventory of wetlands in Argentina and an update of ordenance maps of native forests.