As revealed by L’Express at the start of the week, Emmanuel Macron confirmed, this Friday, November 10, during the closing of a summit on the poles and glaciers in Paris the construction of a French ship, as part of a polar research effort in which France will invest one billion euros “by 2030”.
Based between Nouméa, in New Caledonia, and Hobart, in Australia, this vessel capable of navigating in the ice which blocks the polar seas and which can reach several meters in thickness, will be shared between the Western Pacific and Antarctica. It will bear the name of former Prime Minister Michel Rocard, who was the first French ambassador for the poles, said the French president.
A billion euros in polar research
He affirmed that by 2030 France would invest one billion euros in polar research, without going into detail. It will notably finance two major initiatives in the two poles: the Polar Pod with explorer Jean-Louis Etienne in the Southern Ocean, and the Arctic Station supported by the Tara Foundation.
France will rebuild its Dumont d’Urville station on the Antarctic Peninsula from 2026 and will work on renovating the Franco-Italian Concordia station, while maintaining the best environmental standards, the Head of State said, adding that Paris would participate in close collaboration with its European partners in a major research project in East Antarctica, where knowledge is still limited.
The meeting held since Wednesday at the National Museum of Natural History in the French capital, as part of the ONE Planet summits organized by Emmanuel Macron in recent years, resulted in a “call from Paris for the poles and glaciers” which, according to the French president, already brings together “around thirty signatory states”. Among them, several European countries but also India, Singapore, South Korea… Or even Tuvalu and Australia, which has just offered climate asylum to the 11,000 citizens of this small group of islands in the Pacific. by rising waters and threatened with disappearance.
Faced with the “collapse” of the frozen surfaces of the planet, an “unprecedented” and “civilizational” challenge for humanity, Emmanuel Macron pleaded for “an unprecedented level of cooperation” despite the “resurgence of geopolitical tensions”. The war in Ukraine “is weakening cooperation with major geopolitical and scientific powers”, he noted, in an allusion to Russia. “Despite all these tensions, it is clear that we must act, make the poles and glaciers privileged spaces for peace, scientific and environmental cooperation,” pleaded the French president.