MY POSTBOX: NEW CALEDONIA - Nouvelle-Calédonie

Saturday, 20 February 2016

NEW CALEDONIA - Nouvelle-Calédonie

New Caledonia (French: Nouvelle-Calédonie) is a special collectivity of France, currently governed under the Nouméa Accord, located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, to the south of Vanuatu, about 1,210 km (750 mi) east of Australia and 17,000 km (11,000 mi) from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Chesterfield Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of Pines, and a few remote islets. The Chesterfield Islands are in the Coral Sea. French people, and especially locals, refer to Grande Terre as Le Caillou ("the pebble"). New Caledonia has a land area of 18,576 km² (7,172 sq mi) divided into three provinces. The North and South Provinces are located on the New Caledonian mainland, while the Loyalty Islands Province is a series of islands off the mainland. Its population of 271,407 (October 2019 census) consists of a mix of the original inhabitants, Kanak people, who are the majority in the North Province and the Loyalty Islands Province and people of European descent (Caldoches and Metropolitan French), Polynesian people (mostly Wallisians), and Southeast Asian people, as well as a few people of Pied-Noir and North African descent who are the majority in the South Province. The capital of the territory is Nouméa.

In 1946, New Caledonia became an overseas territory. By 1953, French citizenship had been granted to all New Caledonians, regardless of ethnicity.

The European and Polynesian populations gradually increased in the years leading to the nickel boom of 1969–1972, and the indigenous Kanak Melanesians became a minority, though they were still the largest ethnic group. Between 1976 and 1988, conflicts between French government actions and the Kanak independence movement saw periods of serious violence and disorder. In 1983, a statute of "enlarged autonomy" for the territory proposed a five-year transition period and a referendum in 1989. In March 1984, the Kanak resistance, Front Indépendantiste, seized farms and the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) formed a provisional government. In January 1985, the French Socialist government offered sovereignty to the Kanaks and legal protection for European settlers. The plan faltered as violence escalated.

The Matignon Agreements, signed on 26 June 1988, ensured a decade of stability. The Nouméa Accord signed 5 May 1998, set the groundwork for a 20-year transition that gradually transfers competences to the local government. Following the timeline set by the Nouméa Accord that stated a vote must take place by the end of 2018, the groundwork was laid for a referendum on full independence from France at a meeting chaired by the French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe on 2 November 2017, to be held by November 2018. Voter list eligibility had been a subject of a long dispute, but the details have since been resolved. On 20 March 2018, the government announced a referendum that was held on 4 November 2018, with independence being rejected.

The archipelago is divided into three provinces: South Province (province Sud). Provincial capital: Nouméa. Area 9,407 km^2,North Province (province Nord). Provincial capital: Koné. Area: 7,348 km². And Loyalty Islands Province (province des îles Loyauté). Provincial capital: Lifou. Area: 1,981 km².

New Caledonia's fauna and flora derive from ancestral species isolated in the region when it broke away from Gondwana many tens of millions of years ago. Not only endemic species have evolved here, but entire genera, families, and even orders are unique to the islands. More of tropical gymnosperm species are endemic to New Caledonia than to any similar egion on Earth. Of the 44 indigenous species of gymnosperms, 43 are endemic. New Caledonia is home to the New Caledonian crow, a bird noted for its tool-making abilities, which rival those of primates. These crows are renowned for their extraordinary intelligence and ability to fashion tools to solve problems, and make the most complex tools of any animal yet studied apart from humans. The endemic kagu, agile and able to run quickly, is a flightless bird, but it is able to use its wings to climb branches or glide. It is the surviving member of monotypic family Rhynochetidae, order Gruiformes.

Several species of New Caledonia are remarkable for their size: Ducula goliath is the largest extant species of pigeon; Rhacodactylus leachianus, the largest gecko in the world; Phoboscincus bocourti, a large skink thought to be extinct until rediscovered in 2003.Much of New Caledonia's fauna present before human settlement is now extinct including Sylviornis a bird over a metre tall not closely related to any living species, and Meiolania a giant horned turtle that diverged from living turtles during the Jurassic period.