France Breaks Laws, Damages Environment to Launch Rockets: Controversy Erupts!

A “biodiversity sanctuary” where protected species are knowingly destroyed? On its website and during free tourist visits in Kourou, the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) boasts about its virtuous multi-year management plans and collaborations with scientific and associative communities.

Behind the scenes, however, the story is different. At the end of 2022, the Cayenne prosecutor’s office initiated a legal investigation targeting the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), which manages the CSG, for the destruction of sensitive habitats and protected species during unauthorized construction activities.

The public institution will be heard at the Cayenne court on December 1st in a plea bargaining session—a kind of “conciliation” between the parties.

Following an investigation with local investigative media Guyaweb and Agence France Presse (AFP), Decatur Metro unveils the details of this case.

The construction in question took place from February to September 2022 and was part of the Callisto project, spearheaded by CNES alongside German and Japanese space agencies, aiming to develop reusable rockets. This “test launcher” is located on the former Diamant launch pad, used by France for rocket launches in the 1970s.

Although degraded, this savannah was home to several habitats and protected species, including a breeding site for the ocellated leptodactyl (Leptodactylus chaquensis), an extremely rare frog listed as endangered on the French Red List of Threatened Species.

According to Cerato, the herpetological association of French Guiana, a pond discovered on the CSG site in early 2022 was home to 13% of the known population of this animal, making it “crucially important for understanding the species and simply for its survival.” The association, which initiated the legal proceedings, has since become a civil party in the case.

The prosecutor suspects that CNES was aware of the presence of these species before work commenced on March 14, 2022. Judicial sources describe phone conversations about this between the Directorate General for Territories and the Sea (DGTM), which was in charge of the proceedings, and the public institution, between March 8 and 10.

CNES was then officially informed via emails from the DGTM and Biotope, the naturalist study office responsible for the fauna-flora inventories on this project.

In an email dated March 23, the supervising service, unaware that the construction had already begun, informed CNES that the work could not start due to the lack of a “protected species exemption” and also because of missing water law permissions.

Instead of halting the illegal activities and regularizing the situation—perhaps by proposing avoidance and compensation measures as is common in such cases—the CNES management decided to continue with the site preparation.

“Any industrial stoppage would have financial impacts. Unless explicitly requested, we will maintain these works,” wrote Nathalie Fuentes, one of the Callisto project managers based in Toulouse, in an email dated March 22, which we have seen.

After eight months of illegality, construction ceased on September 13, 2022, following several inspections by the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB) and the DGTM, just as CNES had received a draft enforcement order from the prefecture. This order was finally issued two months later.

“The CNES environmental service tries to do its job as best as it can, and improvements are noticeable, but it feels they are crushed by the management’s directives prioritizing industrial and economic goals,” notes Rémi Girault, a botanist specializing in savannahs and former president of Guyane Nature Environnement.

The ecological stakes are indeed significant. Across the 650 km² it owns in French Guiana, Europe’s spaceport encompasses 23.8% of the existing savannahs in French Guiana, a biodiversity-rich ecosystem that contains 16% of the known flora of the region on just 0.3% of its surface area.

“These are the spaces most threatened by coastal urbanization. Beyond the CSG, unauthorized savannah destruction is frequently lamented, often based on poorly conducted inventories or ineffective compensation measures,” explains Rémi Girault.

Further elements of the case question CNES’s good faith. As early as 2019, teams from the space center had cleared the area involved in the Callisto project under the guise of a waste cleanup operation, without declaring these works to the prefecture.

Internal exchanges we have accessed suggest that this was, as one of the CNES executives wrote, an operation aimed at not being “bothered by any protected species,” potentially skewing subsequent inventories by Biotope conducted a few months later.

The Callisto affair is not the first instance of the space sector violating biodiversity conservation. In a report dated July 20, 2022, that we obtained, the Regional Scientific Council for Natural Heritage of French Guiana (CSRPN) described the case as “far from being the first at the CSG site” and condemned a “form of contempt for environmental concerns.”

In 2016, CNES had already been ordered by state services to stop unauthorized work on the Ariane 6 launch pad. Moreover, the public institution will be judged on October 6 for a related offence in the Callisto case concerning the development of a so-called PV2 photovoltaic park, covering 4.7 hectares with a capacity of 5 MW.

Judicial sources report that the parcel in question underwent preliminary works to prepare for archaeological digs without waiting for the necessary permissions, including the famous “protected species exemption.” A Biotope inventory conducted in November 2021 identified twelve species with “high to very high” conservation stakes on this site.

Like Callisto, this project carries significant economic weight. The park is financed by a 5 million euro France Relance grant, which was contingent on one condition: the park had to be operational by the end of 2023. This stipulation might justify the rushed start of construction. When asked, CNES declined to respond to our inquiries, stating only that it would “defer to the court’s decision.”

Aside from CNES’s disregard for environmental law, these cases reveal that, despite potentially criminal activities reported by their teams, the higher echelons of the state in French Guiana have shown great leniency towards the space sector.

Once construction stopped following the OFB’s investigation, email exchanges between the general secretary of the prefecture and the director of the DGTM, which we have seen, show that the state did everything to expedite the resumption of work and support CNES through this crisis due to the substantial sums involved.

“Please try to hold back the OFB, as this is a project of major regional interest,” Mathieu Gatineau, former general secretary of the prefecture, requested in an email dated October 6, 2022, addressed to the DGTM, referring to the investigation into PV2.

In the same exchange, Ivan Martin, director of the DGTM, assured his colleague regarding the Callisto case that his teams would not “inspect” the Diamant site following the enforcement order, to avoid any “administrative sanctions.”

“The state is putting 9 billion on the table for the development of space… We do not weigh enough… It may not be regulatory, but we need to find a way to support the works,” Ivan Martin summarized in an email dated September 22, 2022, a few days after the halt of the construction.

These pressures did not prevent CNES from ending up in court. However, its legal journey appears unique in several respects. In the Callisto case, CNES was initially offered by the prosecutor’s office a public interest judicial agreement. This agreement included a fine of 10,000 euros, 20,000 euros in damages, and repair measures over three years. As a legal entity, CNES could have faced up to 750,000 euros in fines.

The amount proposed by the prosecutor’s office seems even more trivial when compared to the recommendations of the independent expert appointed by the court, who estimated the ecological damage at 9.7 million euros and the necessary restoration period between 23 to 57 years.

This initial agreement, deemed too lenient towards CNES, was rejected by the Cayenne tribunal in July 2024. The future legal proceedings for CNES now hinge on the hearing on December 1st, where the civil party hopes to reclassify the facts of the Callisto case as an ecocide offense and proceed to trial.

Following our investigation, neither CNES, the state services, Mr. Gatineau, now positioned at the prefecture of Bouches-du-Rhône, nor the former deputy prosecutor who initiated the public interest judicial agreement, responded to our inquiries. The prosecutor’s office has declined to comment before October 6 to ensure the “serenity of the proceedings.”

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