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Golden Mountain: is the Guyanese project buried?

The French government rejected the Montagne d'Or project in Guyana, which was deemed "incompatible with the requirements of environmental protection". But the promoter of the project did not say his last word.

The executive seems to have finally decided against the project Montagne d'Or. Yet similar gold projects, also using closed loop cyanide, have been allowed in Guyana. But Montagne d'Or was emblematic by its gigantism, 800 hectares, in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, and decried for its Russian shareholding ... The project crystallized for the last two years an opposition more and more hard between, on the one hand, the defenders of the environment and indigenous peoples, and on the other hand, those who defended the employment that could have generated the mine. Among them, the majority of elected representatives of Guyana.

Political trophy

The controversy had spread to all French territory and even internationally. The UN had pinned Paris. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination had "summoned" France to resume the consultation process, or to suspend Montagne d'Or. Since the beginning of the year, Emmanuel Macron had distanced himself from the project, which he was initially in favor of.
By leaving him, a few days before the European elections, he offers a beautiful trophy to the former director general of WWF France, the environmentalist Pascal Canfin passed to the presidential camp, since he is on the list of the Republic on the march for the Strasbourg Parliament.

Law void ?

Is the Guyanese project buried? Environment Minister François de Rugy says the project "will not happen". But the Council of Ecological Defense, bringing together thirteen ministers, including the latter, said - a nuance that has not escaped WWF - " the current project of the Montagne d'Or is incompatible with the requirements of protection of the environment " . Environmental requirements that do not exist yet black on white in the current mining code. It has been eight years since we reformed it in France. The government promises a bill in December ...

This leaves room for maneuver to the developer of the mining project, which for eight years that he explores this deposit, is in no hurry. It has already made changes to the energy production needed at the mine, it would be solar, on the local jobs, more numerous, or on the storage of residues, extended. In its latest statement, the Montagne d'Or company says it wants to "continue the dialogue" and "support the will of the government to accelerate the reform of the mining code (...) which will allow, it hopes, to clarify the framework of mining in France ".