This Wednesday, November 27, the Bordeaux Administrative Court of Appeal confirmed that two concessions from the Montagne d'Or mining company could not be extended. And this, on the grounds that the project of the same name presents “ a risk of serious damage to the environment “. This open-air industrial mine, located according to the terms of the court ruling in one of the richest ecoregions in the world in terms of biodiversity », should in fact generate several tens of millions of tonnes of cyanurized sludge stored in dikes with significant risks of ruptures, and the surface exploitation of alluvial gold planned in the project would lead to the destruction of 7 hectares of forest. This court decision, the latest sequence in a legal battle lasting more than five years, does not bury the mining project and could be the subject of an appeal before the Council of State. The legal chronicle is not over.
Judicial chronicle of a mining extraction project in the French colony
This open-air industrial gold mine project was initiated in 2011, the year in which the first explorations and drilling began. He planned to dig a huge pit 120 to 220 meters deep over 800 hectares for the benefit of the mining industry to extract 85 tonnes of gold from a primary deposit discovered in the 1990s in western Guyana. The gold mine, which would be the largest ever exploited in France, was to be dug on one of the eight concessions owned by the Montagne d'Or Mining Company (CMO). At the origin of the CMO was a Guyanese mining company, SOTRAPMAG, founded in 1986. From 2011, two multinationals in the mining sector – the Canadian company Colombus Gold and British society Nordgold (whose majority shareholder is Russian) – bought SOTRAPMAG. It was in July 2016 that these two firms renamed it the Compagnie Miniere Montagne d'Or, the same name as the project they intend to develop on the concession where the coveted primary deposit was discovered.
This project serving the mining industry was actively supported by the national political class, including Emmanuel Macron as Minister of the Economy in 2015 and President in 2017; as well as by the Guyanese political class. But from 2016, opposition was formed against the project. Initiated in July 2016 with the creation of the Guyanese collective “Or de question!” », it quickly expanded outside the colony, being joined by around a hundred national and international NGOs. Opposition to the mining project in Guyana is also formed around the Union of Guyanese Workers (UTG), at the forefront of the general strike of March-April 2017; as well as the Indigenous Youth of Guyana (JAG). After three years of conflict, in 2019, the executive announced the abandonment of the project and refused to extend two concessions – “ Elysium » et « Montagne d’or » – of the CMO for a period of 25 years. But these executive decisions, giving in in the face of local and national opposition, were soon challenged before the Cayenne administrative court by the CMO.
On December 24, 2020, the administrative court annulled a decision of January 21, 2019 by which the Ministry of the Economy, which had not responded to the request for extension of the two concessions sent since 2016 by the mining company, implicitly refused to grant this extension. A decision confirmed again in July 2021 by the Bordeaux Court of Appeal, then ordering the State to extend the CMO's mining concessions.
But the legal chronicle of the Montagne d'or project experienced a turnaround in February 2022: the Constitutional Council, seized of a priority question of constitutionality (QPC) by the France Nature Environnement association, considers that the old mining code which allowed renewing concessions without taking into account the environmental consequences is contrary to the Environmental Charter. A decision opening a new avenue of appeal against the Montagne d’or project. On October 19, 2023, the Council of State referred to by the Ministry of the Economy annuls the judgments of the Bordeaux Administrative Court of Appeal of July 2021 and refers the case back to this same court. Due to the new legal framework, and in view of the environmental consequences of the concession extensions requested by the CMO, the court concluded that the refusal of the extensions was legal. This decision, which does not however kill the mining project, could be contested before the Council of State.
The decision of the Bordeaux Court of Appeal, referred to by the Ministry of the Economy, should not, however, mislead about the interests of the colonial state in Guyana. The latter always defended the project before the protest gained ground. It was under pressure from local and national opposition that the State engaged in these legal proceedings against the mining company, and could only with difficulty preserve the illusion of ecological concern without taking into account the Council's decision. constitutional law of October 2023.
The mining industry, historical pillar of French colonialism
In fact, the creation of a gold industry in Guyana is a historic project for France in the continental colony. The gold industry in this Amazonian territory began in the mid-19th century following the first discoveries of gold deposits. Due to the weakness of extraction tools and capital investment, gold extraction is primarily alluvial, on the surface, before becoming mining. But the mining industry in Guyana will experience growth due to the improvement of extraction techniques, the increase in the price of gold on the world market and the emergence of large international extractivist industrial companies. The discoveries of gold deposits at the beginning of the 21st century will confirm the potential of the French colony for large mining companies. In 2014, the chairman of the board of directors of Auplata, the leading gold producer in Guyana, announced on BFMBusiness that Guyana would be “ the largest gold reserve in the world “. It is in these coordinates that the “Montagne d’or” project fits.
A few figures are enough to understand that the exploitation of the wealth of the colonized territory by the development of a gold mining industry in Guyana is in no way intended for the colonized populations. In this area, one person in two lives below the poverty line, 45% of 15-24 year olds are unemployed, only half are in school and 12% of them have a baccalaureate. The colony is also marked by the high cost of living: food products are 39% more expensive there than in France.
Faced with these alarming situations, the government has chosen to push Guyana, like its other colonies, further into poverty, by cutting the overseas budget as part of its austerity offensive carried out on a national scale, while by strengthening its repressive colonial arsenal to silence dissent. Recently in Guyana, the Republican Guard was deployed to “restore public tranquility” in the west of the territory, particularly affected by social poverty. In a context where the French State is increasingly contested in its colonies, we must denounce the colonial policies carried out in contempt of the populations and for the benefit of the interests of large mining groups plundering gold in Guyana and nickel in Kanaky, as with that of the large retail groups responsible for the high cost of living.
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