Guadeloupe Region, France

Located at the heart of the Caribbean, Guadeloupe is a 1 700 km² archipelago with around 405 000 inhabitants.

The regional council of Guadeloupe is a local authority mainly in charged with spatial planning, training and secondary schools, and economic development (agriculture, fisheries, tourism, artisan, industries, etc.). It is also highly involved in environment preservation (biodiversity, landscape, water and waste management, and energy efficiency), research and innovation, culture and society.

Research and innovation is a key topic for the Regional Council as it fosters competitiveness and employment. To achieve this goals, the Regional Strategy for Innovation (S³), co-designed with the French government’s Office of Research and Economic Development and Innovation, identifies priority sectors such as agronomy and biodiversity, energy and raw materials, naturals risk and silver economy and creative industries. By supporting research and innovation in these sectors, the Regional council of Guadeloupe seeks to

- Reinforce research excellence;

- Focus research on local issues and concerns;

- Make local research centres more visible and facilitate their integration into international consortia;

- Foster research results transfer to SME and to society well-being;

- Stimulate innovative companies.

The Regional Council supports research and innovation through funding tools using structural funds (ERDF and ESF) and the launch of calls for proposals (i.e. doctorate grants to support research inspired by society's needs, post doctorate grants to host high profile young foreign researchers, administrative and methodological support to help local team participation to research framework program call). It also finances research facilities to ensure high quality research and to keep them attractive.

Secondly, the Regional Council of Guadeloupe also pays high attention to knowledge transfer, collaboration between research organisations and companies, and innovative project processing. Indeed, it supports Synergîle, a cluster dedicated to issues regarding renewable energies and raw materials. Synergîle, through its calls for proposals and technical informative meetings, fosters innovative projects. Further, some actions cofounded by the Regional Council as creative training sessions, such as design as an innovation path, ease the innovative process.

Lastly, promoting youth interest in science, technology, engineering and math is the third and final pillar of Regional Council of Guadeloupe’s support programme in the field of Research and Innovation.

While designing an efficient ecosystem dedicated to research excellence, innovative companies and high profile students, the Regional Council is also involved in various international collaborative projects. For example, the Regional Council led an Interreg project on geothermal energy and took part in another on seismic hazards. The Council was also involved from the early stages of the Era-Net Net-Biome project, the network on research on biodiversity in European outermost and overseas territories.

Joining BiodivERsA3, following in the spirit of the Net-Biome initiative, is a logical next step in the Regional Council of Guadeloupe’s engagement in favour of research on biodiversity that supports sustainable development. Biodiversity is a high interest topic for the Council. Many challenges facing the territory are indeed linked to biodiversity, such as emergent diseases, climate change mitigation, biodiversity erosion and pollution.

In BiodivERsA3, the Regional Council of Guadeloupe is responsible for WP2, “Integrating Research Programs and Addressing Issues With and Within Overseas Territories / Outermost Regions” and of tasks for the Promotion of Science-Policy Interface within the whole research process.”