Unknown to the general public, the community of French southern and Antarctic lands celebrated its 70th anniversary Wednesday, August 6. If they remain uninhabited, these territories rich in biodiversity are of strategic importance for France.
Forget the white sandy beaches and the coconut palms from certain tricolor overseas territories. Far from the warm and tropical images of the Antilles or Reunion, France has radically different ultramarine territories. These are French southern and Antarctic lands (TAAF) whose community celebrated its 70th anniversary on Wednesday.
The TAAF brings together a set of ultramarine territories in the south of the Indian Ocean. They are made up of several districts: the Crozet archipelago, the Kerguelen islands, the Saint-Paul islands, the scattered islands and the Adélie earth (the French part of the Antarctic).
These southern lands have the distinction of being under the authority of an administrator and a prefect, who ensure its security and ensure the application of the laws that govern the community. Among these laws, the ban on settlement. Apart from a few hundred scientists and soldiers who carry out missions of several months, no population has settled in the long term in the area.
Fishing as an engine
Besides the research and missions of the army, the southern economic fabric develops in a unique way: having no employees or companies established in the region, the southern economy is managed from the meeting from Reunion. It is mainly structured around fishery resources, southern fishing representing 10% of the French fishing sector. If this industry weighs as much at the national level it is thanks to its exclusive economic zone (ZEE) of 2,300,000 km² of exploitable maritime space or 20% of the 10,186,624 km² of the French ZEE.
Fishing is therefore a mastodon, but a mastodon that wants to be durable: the southern waters fishery, grouped under the name “Southern fishing”, is certified by the MSC label. The latter, although controversial, to the ambition to ensure the renewal of fish stocks and respect for ecosystems.
In this region, we mainly fish the Southern Links, described as “white gold” by experts. An article published in the Cross relates that in 2023, nearly a third of these fish were captured under the French pavilion. The Southern Links is a very popular species of the Americans, sold between $ 80 and 100 kilo in the American supermarkets.
Fishery resources, but not only
Besides seafood, other resources are full of southern depths. Thanks to the TAAF, France has one of the largest underwater territories in the world, which guarantees it access to all the resources it contains: the basement of the scattered islands, which are located between Madagascar and Mozambique, abounds with hydrocarbons. As for the other southern islands, the rare estimates that exist suggest that their basement would be equipped with nickel and cobalt.
However, these resources were unexploited: in December 2020, the government definitively ended the maritime oil drilling in France. As for minerals, they are unusable for the moment: their extraction would cost too much and could have heavy consequences on ecosystems.
The TAAF also draw income from more modest sources, such as the anchorage tax, paid by ships that stop in their waters, the patronage of certain foundations, where the editing and sale of unique stamps. Until 2020, the TAAF community also organized tourist trips aboard the Marion Dufresne, one of the ships that ensures the logistics chain in the TAAF. But COVVI-19’s pandemic was right for this kind of expedition.
A territory in the heart of global geopolitics
Beyond the benches of exploitable fish or oil wells, the TAAF and their latitudes also have strategic importance. These territories, rich in biodiversity, constitute a unique laboratory to observe and understand climate change, through sixty scientific projects carried out by the French Polar Institute. France has also created one of the largest protected marine areas in the world (672,000 km²), recognized as UNESCO World Heritage since 2019.
On the international scene, the TAAF ZEE allows France to play a leading role in discussions on maritime security and ocean governance. Not to mention that with tensions in the Middle East, part of the maritime traffic in the Red Sea has moved to the Indian Ocean. So much so that today, almost 30% of container flows between Asia and Europe go through the Mozambique canal, near the scattered islands.
The strategic character of island territories is well understood by regional actors: since the independence of former French colonies of the Indian Ocean, Madagascar and Mauritius regularly claim the sovereignty of the spoke islands.
