We thought we’d find Sarra Gaspard under the saturated neon lights of a laboratory. Against all expectations, it is on the beach of Saint-Félix, in the town of Gosier, that she gives an appointment. “I was there last week with my students and also my daughter, to collect samples of algae to study”, she justifies with a laugh. The researcher swapped her white blouse for a floral blouse and an imposing wooden necklace. Passing workers greet her: they are unaware that they have before their eyes the most prominent chemist in Guadeloupe.
Sarra Gaspard made an important discovery in the Covachim-M2E laboratory, attached to the University of the West Indies, and in collaboration with the University of Toronto: ecologically viable avenues for ridding the West Indian soils of the “poison” that has been consuming them for fifty years, chlordecone. “We have demonstrated the existence of natural bacteria, contained in the soils of Guadeloupe, capable of degrading the chlordecone moleculeshe explains. Micro-biologically speaking, we were told it was impossible. »
Highly carcinogenic pesticide
Introduced into banana plantations through the use of pesticides, highly carcinogenic, not very mobile or soluble, chlordecone will not disappear naturally for six hundred years, according to models. As for depollution solutions “purely chemical”, they were discarded because they were too risky for the environment. Thus, while the conditions for applying bacteria on a large scale have yet to be studied, Sarra Gaspard’s discovery revives a long-forgotten feeling: hope. “I am an eternal optimist, I always have been, in all aspects of my life”she says, hammering her motto: “If we don’t look, we won’t find. »
Born in 1968 in the town of Baie-Mahault, the Guadeloupean owes her sense of experimentation to her father, a construction worker and inventor in his spare time: “He spent a lot of time trying new things”, recalls the 50-year-old. Very concerned about ecology, he also bequeathed him a boundless love for living things and nature. It is also biology that she chooses, for her first year of license at the University of Paris 11 in Orsay (Essonne). But her teachers redirected her to chemistry, a subject in which she “always had better results”.
“Ethical Science”
Driven by the wish to make “ethical science”Sarra Gaspard chose a discipline which, in the 1990s, was only in its infancy: environmental chemistry. “Green chemistry is obvious today, although insufficiently practiced, she reports. We no longer have a choice insofar as we know the environmental damage that industrial chemistry has been able to commit. » His favorite subjects? Biomass depollution and recovery.
After three years practicing in Switzerland, the lack of the country and a presentiment – “I always leave a large part of intuition in my research”, she confided – bring her back to Guadeloupe. By contacting water treatment companies, she discovered in 1999, seven years before the scandal broke, the extent of chlordecone pollution. Later, in 2007, she studied sargassum, brown algae that invades beaches, decomposes there and releases toxic gases. Always with flair and one step ahead: the phenomenon will grow from 2011, to become today “the scourge of the Caribbean”. “If we value them, sargassum is a resource with great potential, nuance the researcher. They can be used in water treatment or energy storage. »
“There is still such a long way to go”
In 2018, she received an award from the Cuban Academy of Sciences, one of the most prestigious in the Caribbean. But the researcher still has little taste for self-satisfaction: “There is still such a long way to go… The day Guadeloupe will have a real depollution system, then maybe I will be proud of myself. » It identifies two main “pitfalls” : the administrative lengths and the latent lack of resources. His team is forced to run after calls for tenders: an online kitty has even been opened by a comic book author, Jessica Forgot, to help finance his work.
Rather than discouragement, however, Sarra Gaspard prefers enthusiasm and salutes all these “young students involved in research projects” : “It’s reassuring for our future”she exclaims, decidedly and resolutely optimistic.
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His inspiration. The Kassav’ group, pioneer of West Indian zouk
“Beyond my favorite fields, I am very steeped in my culture and keen on music. I have always found Kassav”s approach particularly inspiring. They knew how to build a new music, from the Caribbean culture and from a vision of the world that they carried, anchored in them. Moreover, within the framework of a collective creation. Their music today is recognized internationally! I like to think that I find in my work this sense of the collective and this same desire to overcome the impossible, and to go beyond borders. »