Forrest: France depleting New Caledonia’s natural reserves

France is depleting New Caledonia’s natural reserves, Minister of Foreign Affairs of New Caledonia, Mickael Forrest, said during roundtable discussions and a hybrid-format press conference titled “Decolonization, International Diplomacy, and the Role of Communication in the Modern World,” Report informs.

He noted that New Caledonia ranks fourth in the world in terms of nickel deposits, and the French metropolis has been extracting it for more than a hundred years.

“It wasn’t until 2024 that we were able to introduce a nickel tax. Using the proceeds from those taxes, we were able to create a fund for future generations. This is a regime close to the apartheid, where we did not have the right to work, we did not have the right to speak our language, we did not have the right to go out, where we had a number of negative situations. All this had a serious impact on the Kanak people,” he added.