Held from July 1st to 3rd, 2026 in Martinique, the 18th Regional Cooperation Conference between the French Antilles and French Guiana marked a new stage for the French overseas territories in the Americas. Following several institutional advances, the challenge is no longer simply to assert their belonging to the Caribbean, the Guiana Shield, and the Amazon, but to transform this position into a capacity for action. Political representation, economic exchanges, connectivity, Sargassum seaweed, waste management, energy, and biodiversity: the discussions revealed common priorities and, above all, the tools still needed to move from intentions to concrete results.
Changing location within one's own regional environment
The opening remarks highlighted the unique situation of Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Saint-Martin, and Saint-Barthélemy: these territories belong to the French Republic and, depending on their status, to the European Union, while also being geographically, economically, and culturally embedded in regional basins whose risks and opportunities they share. This dual belonging can be an asset, but it also creates tensions when European standards, trade policies, or decision-making frameworks are difficult to reconcile with Caribbean and Amazonian realities.
A shared political ambition has emerged: to no longer remain on the periphery of discussions that directly concern the territories. Maritime routes, security, trade, the environment, energy, and digital technology cannot be considered without their effective participation.
The memberships of Martinique and Guadeloupe in several regional organizations, like the momentum initiated by French Guiana, reflect this desire to participate in the spaces where regional solutions are being developed. These memberships open up new possibilities, but will only be effective if accompanied by a sustained presence, administrative resources, and the ability to influence decisions.
The statements from the local authorities reflected this ambition in various ways. Saint-Martin pointed out that, on an island shared between two sovereignties, cross-border practices have often preceded legal frameworks. The territory thus advocates for pragmatic economic integration, capable of resolving the inconsistencies between geographical proximity and applicable regulations.
French Guiana presented its role as a link between Europe, the Caribbean, the Guiana Shield and the Amazon, based on its representations in Suriname and Brazil, its close cooperation and its recent accession to the Caribbean Telecommunications Union.
Guadeloupe, for its part, has presented a territorial diplomacy structured around three complementary dimensions: political positioning, integration into regional organizations and the operational translation of this presence into projects.
Saint-Barthélemy finally stressed the need to strengthen cooperation in the areas of digital connectivity, waste, sargassum and energy transition.
Workshops united around a common imperative: organizing interdependencies
The plenary sessions and workshops brought to light highly interdependent priorities. On the economic front, the discussions highlighted the main obstacles to regional trade: insufficient links, logistical costs, different standards, lack of data, and limited capacity of small businesses.
Services and innovative sectors – Blue Tech, AgriTech, climate, biodiversity, water, spatial data, and cybersecurity – nevertheless offer promising opportunities, provided that businesses receive better support and funding is coordinated. Logistics must therefore be viewed as an ecosystem encompassing transport, infrastructure, customs, standards, information, and traceability.
From an environmental perspective, sargassum seaweed now necessitates a proactive and coordinated Caribbean response, covering the entire value chain from forecasting to recovery, with particular attention to health risks. Discussions also addressed biodiversity, coastal erosion, water, energy, and waste. Regarding recycling, regional pooling of resources appears promising, but requires consistent flows, high-quality sorting, realistic logistics, identified markets, and a viable economic model. A shared priority emerges: to concretely organize regional interdependencies through shared data, appropriate infrastructure, enhanced skills, coordinated funding, and clearly defined responsibilities.
From institutional adherence to a project-based diplomacy
The section on territorial diplomacy clarified the conditions for this transition to action. Membership in a regional organization is not an end in itself: it provides access to forums for dialogue, technical networks, and opportunities, but everything else still needs to be built. The examples presented demonstrate that results depend on consistent participation, knowledge of how organizations function, and the ability to identify effective points of entry.
Guadeloupe has exemplified this approach through its involvement in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, the Association of Caribbean States, and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Placing cooperation officers and volunteers within these organizations fosters trust, improves information flow, and helps identify project opportunities. Guadeloupe's vice-presidency of the subcommittee dedicated to Sargassum seaweed also demonstrates how an institutional presence can serve a territorial priority and give it international reach.
French Guiana is following a complementary path. By choosing to participate in Caribbean cooperation through telecommunications, digital technology, and cybersecurity, it is leveraging areas where it can provide immediately identifiable added value. Its membership in the Caribbean Telecommunications Union thus opens up opportunities for its infrastructure, innovative businesses, and technical expertise. This approach reflects a conception of cooperation based on reciprocity: the territory presents itself not only as a beneficiary, but as a partner capable of contributing to regional development.
The discussions also highlighted the strategic role of CARICOM's specialized agencies in health, civil protection, disaster management, and security. For French local authorities, these technical bodies can provide particularly concrete points of entry, even when their foreign and trade policy responsibilities remain under the purview of the French state and the European Union.
Roadmaps to ensure continuity
Throughout the conference, several conditions for success were repeatedly emphasized: having reliable data, ensuring administrative continuity between meetings, mobilizing the right financial instruments, strengthening engineering skills, improving standards compatibility, and maintaining an active presence in regional networks. The main risk would be to make numerous announcements without organizing follow-up.
The preparation of roadmaps following the CCRAG addresses this requirement. These roadmaps must prioritize actions, identify responsibilities, and allow for the measurement of progress on commitments between conferences. The platform bringing together local authorities, prefectures, and embassies should contribute to this continuity. The goal is to make the conference not an isolated event, but a milestone in ongoing cooperation.
The 18th CCRAG thus focused less on demonstrating the necessity of regional cooperation – which was already largely accepted – than on clarifying the conditions for its effectiveness. The French territories in America now have stronger positions within their regional environment, experiences to share, and sectors in which they can contribute expertise. The challenge is to convert these achievements into exchanges, alliances and projects that produce visible effects for the territories and their populations.
CORÉOM, an extension on the scale of community initiatives
Regional cooperation is also a facet of international solidarity. In the French overseas territories, this solidarity is not limited to long distances; it takes shape in the Caribbean, Amazon, and Indian Ocean basins through partnerships built with neighboring countries and territories. Faced with shared challenges—climate risks, health, biodiversity, youth, culture, and inequality—it allows for the pooling of experiences, skills, and resources. This local solidarity is based on a principle of reciprocity: each territory contributes, learns, and develops solutions with its partners.
CORÉOM operates within this dimension of regional cooperation. The program supports overseas civil society organizations that develop concrete international solidarity initiatives with partners in neighboring countries. Led by La Guilde with the support of the French Development Agency and the Fondation de France, and with the backing of CIRRMA and regional multi-stakeholder networks, it supports cooperation projects designed by associations in Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte, and Réunion with partners in their respective regions.
At their respective levels, these initiatives complement territorial diplomacy efforts, infrastructure projects, and major technical programs, aligning with several shared regional priorities such as the environment, health, youth, culture, education, sports, and social solidarity. They exemplify concrete cooperation, manifested through local actions, exchanges of best practices, and partnerships directly rooted in the realities experienced by civil society.
Comparing the CCRAG and CORÉOM reveals two complementary dimensions, without conflating them: institutions create the political, legal, technical, and financial frameworks for regional integration; local actors can contribute to translating these frameworks into concrete action within their territories. One of the challenges for future roadmaps will be to better coordinate these different levels of action so that regional ambitions permeate community projects, and so that experiences on the ground can, in turn, foster cooperation.