Delaying a rocket launch has created a brighter future
How a handful of EU government officials and citizens in French Guiana have reclaimed their voice and demanded their rights, despite being over 7,000km away from Brussels
French Guiana is one of the European Union’s most overlooked regions. Perhaps because it’s thousands of kilometres away from the institution’s central offices in Belgium.
But French Guiana is part of France. It’s an overseas department with 281,612 inhabitants, nestled between Suriname and Brazil, and is now the second largest French territory (by surface area) after being officially incorporated as a region in 1946.
This means there’s a little piece of France on the vast South American continent, whose highest legal authority is the Court of Justice on mainland France, its agricultural policies are defined in Belgium, and its currency — the euro — is controlled by the European Central Bank in Germany.
However, the region is experiencing exceptional demographic growth, and facing economic and societal challenges that hugely differ from other French regions.
The Assembly of French Guiana was formed in 2011 to combat these unique challenges, and to specifically address the sense of abandonment that the region’s population felt. The stakes are high given the exploitation of natural resources, lack of infrastructure maintenance, environmental threats, and the economic pressure posed by migratory dynamics.
House prices are 12% higher than on mainland France despite lower-than-average wages, unemployment levels are at 23% (while in France the rate is only 10%), and cultural integration is a huge consideration as the region is home to over 20 ethnic communities and a number of different official languages.
Despite the formation of an Assembly, in early 2017 the territory was brought to a standstill due to an 11-day strike.
The strike was called for by more than 30 labour unions who demanded improved public services and security. The general strike disrupted the Arianespace rocket launch at Europe’s Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, gaining international attention. Many of French Guiana’s residents felt this technology was valued more than their welfare; 16% of the region’s population don’t have access to running water, and the territory’s interior population lacks real infrastructure and is completely isolated all major towns.
Following this unrest, in April 2017 a treaty was introduced demanding a large-scale discussion around the longer-term ambitions of French Guiana. Pou Lagwiyann dékolé, meaning “let Guyane take off” in Creole (one of the territory’s official languages), requires an open discussion between French state officials, local government officials and the region’s citizens.
And true to their word, the Assembly has just launched a societal project, États généraux de la Guyane, in which they will debate and co-create policy and projects with the territory’s people that will positively impact the country for the next 30 years. This is to uphold the region’s principle of inclusiveness and modernisation, to grow the economy in a sustainable way, and to ensure their voice is heard across the ocean in the EU.
Officials are set to gather citizens’ views, even in the remotest areas, with the implementation of a digital space (the Civocracy platform) and complementing offline methods. Their aim is to produce a white paper (“livre blanc de la Guyane”) that will inform future policy. The project, and use of Civocracy, will allow for transparent decisions that are adapted to French Guiana’s own specificities, that consider its traditions and create an effective infrastructure, without leading to an ecological disaster: the territory is coated in tropical rainforests, coastal mangroves, savannahs, mountains and numerous wetlands, where new species are still being discovered and there are large gold deposits under the soil.
Discussions involving the entire ecosystem will be launched around specific themes to address priority areas such as employment, transport, resources, biodiversity, security and social cohesion.
As of this week, the initial discussion, which is aimed at gathering viewpoints on what citizens both want and expect from the Etats Généraux project, is now open, and top officials from both France and French Guiana are already active on the platform.
Consultations will be open for the following two months.
Post your own proposition for French Guiana on a related topic.
Co-authored by Madeline Le Botain. Her French translation of this article can be found here.
