What can the French Overseas Territories teach us about how we need to renew humanity's relationship with the ocean?

In an article published in Le Monde on January¹, 2024, I alerted public opinion to the need to include the French Overseas Territories more fully in the now crucial issue of ocean governance, - on which President Macron hoped, in his 2019 declaration on sea policy, that France would be in the “vanguard”-. Although the French Overseas Territories alone account for 97% of the French EEZ, and constitute a remarkable singularity of the French oceanic space, their contributions remain minoritized, even denied. How can such invisibilization be understood in a context where, as the present Theme 1 indicates, the plurality of knowledge is tending to be recognized and valued? What can the French Overseas Territories teach us about France's relationship with the ocean? What can they teach us about how we need to renew humanity's relationship with the ocean? We propose to provide some answers, based on a three-year anthropological survey of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans where France has Overseas territories.