---
title: "Nauru: How the Richest Country in the World Destroyed Itself"
description: "It feels like a scene from a climate-change dystopia. A world in which 80 percent of all land has been rendered uninhabitable by human greed—once lush forests replaced by a toxic desert. A world in which the groundwater is poisoned, and all humanity forced to live on a narrow, survivable strip between desert and ocean, even as the waves rise ever higher.\n\nNo, this isn't the synopsis for some new Netflix satire; a much-more depressing companion piece to 2021's *Don't Look Up*. The place I just described really exists. A real-life island state that today stands as a dark warning to the rest of the world.\n\nThat island's name is Nauru. And it was ground zero for an environmental apocalypse.\n\nIt wasn't meant to be this way. In the early-1980s, Nauru was—per capita—one of the richest nations on Earth. Its government oversaw a sovereign wealth fund sufficient to keep its entire population in luxury for centuries to come.\n\nYet these days, the nation stands as a broke, near-uninhabitable wasteland. A place of poverty and desperation.\n\n## Paradise Lost\n\nPicture your idea of an island paradise.\n\nWe're guessing it might be somewhere tropical, near the equator. We're guessing, also, that it'll be isolated—far from the maddening crowd. Somewhere with clear waters, white sand, and natural riches.\n\nSomewhere, in other words, like Nauru.\n\nA tiny speck of land a third the size of Manhattan, the Republic of Nauru sits a mere 48 km south of the equator, out in the Pacific's wild blue yonder.\n\nPopulated by a mere 12,511 people, it's over 300 km away from the nearest other island, Banaba— itself the extreme westernmost part of Kiribati. The only place its airline regularly flies to—Brisbane in Australia—is thousands of kilometers distant.\n\nNor is it just where isolation is concerned that Nauru seems like the perfect getaway.\n\nA raised coral atoll ringed by white sand dotted with palm trees, Nauru from the air appears Insta-ready. The sort of place depressed office workers dream about escaping to.\n\nBut look a little closer, and you'll start to see that this is all just an illusion. A mirage created by distance and expectation.\n\nAs your plane gets closer, it'll quickly become apparent that—rather than a tropical paradise—Nauru is instead an ecological nightmare.\n\nThat ring of sand and palm trees around the island? Well, it turns out that's the only habitable part. A 274m-wide zone, where nearly all life on Nauru is forced to take place.\n\nThe bulk of the island's 21 sq km is nothing but toxic desert. A world of jagged limestone peaks and fine, irritating dust where nothing can grow.\n\nKnown as Topside, it spent decades as the source of Nauru's unmatched wealth.\n\nToday, though, Topside is responsible for all the nation's ills. The place that contaminated much of the sparse groundwater, leaving the population reliant on a malfunctioning desalination plant. The moonscape where nothing can be cultivated, leading to locals' dependence on highly-processed imported foods.\n\nSpeaking of the locals, they're thought to be some of the sickest people on Earth.\n\nWith extreme rates of obesity, Nauru is one of the world's fattest nations, as well as one with among the highest rates of smoking, diabetes, and alcoholism.\n\nThat last one in turn gives rise to high rates of domestic violence, and other antisocial behavior like drunk driving—a weirdly impressive feat when you consider the island has only a single road.\n\nNot that the sense of sickness stops with the citizens.\n\n*MIT Reader* ran an article in 2019 about what life is like on the island, which included the grim sentence:\n\n> \"Desperation seems to pervade all of Nauru.\"\n\nAmong other problems the article listed, were the high rate of unemployment; the crumbling houses and aging infrastructure; and the rotting garbage piled high on the roadside.\n\nIn short, the vibe on Nauru is less \"Pacific island getaway\" and more \"post-apocalyptic sci-fi\". One where the main threat isn't zombies, but a suffocating sense of despair, caused by ecological breakdown.\n\nBecause, make no mistake, this microscopic nation didn't always look like this.\n\nJust 40 years ago, it was the envy of the world.\n\nIn the 1980s, Nauruans were second only to Saudis in terms of wealth as GDP per capita. Locals drove luxury sports cars and used money as toilet paper. The government owned a fleet of cruise ships and a loss-making airline, and once blew $400,000 on what the *New York Times* called a \"floating cocktail lounge\".\n\nCitizens were guaranteed employment, with free access to healthcare, education, and opportunities to study abroad. Meanwhile, a trust fund had already amassed $400m, and was projected to reach $1 billion by the 1990s—equivalent to roughly 2.3 billion in today's money. All for a nation of barely 12,000 people.\n\nThe obvious question then, is: what happened? What caused Nauru's spectacular nosedive from the pinnacle of global wealth rankings to somewhere near the bottom?\n\nThe answer lies not in some inherent fecklessness among the locals, but in an all-too human foible: greed. Greed on the part of outsiders, on the part of corporations, and—yes—on the part of Nauruan elites.\n\nA rapacious greed that could one day leave the rest of the world as broken and benighted as Nauru.\n\n## After the White Gold Rush\n\nWhen discussing the complexities of cause and effect, the cliche is to evoke a butterfly. Y'know, that old chestnut about how a single butterfly beating its wings in China can eventually cause a tornado in Delaware, or a man's pants to unexpectedly fall down in Ireland, or something equally absurd.\n\nReally, though, the cliche should probably evoke doorstops in Australia. Because it was the precise placing of one such doorstop in 1899 that led to Nauru becoming a wasteland.\n\nThe exact sequence of events that brought that doorstop to the Sydney office of the Pacific Islands Company, has sadly been lost to history.\n\nWhat we do know is that it came from Nauru. We know, too, that whoever found it assumed it was petrified wood.\n\nSadly for the fate of the island, there was someone working at that Sydney office who just happened to know a whole lot about petrified wood. Someone, who was both observant enough and boring enough to be all like: \"mind if I borrow that doorstep to run some tests? It's not like I'm doing anything else this weekend!\"\n\nThat observant-but-dull dude's name was Albert Fuller Ellis.\n\nAnd it was his fateful encounter with that doorstop that would destroy Nauru's future more-assuredly than the beating wings of some random butterfly.\n\nAt the time Ellis was running his tests, Nauru looked very different. Closer to the perfect tropical island we discussed at the start.\n\nRather than a blasted desert, the interior of the island—the region known as Topside—was a place of almond and pandanus trees. A lush, green world filled with the cries of migrating birds.\n\nSo pristine was the place, that—despite being annexed by Germany—it still retained the name bestowed on it by the British man who first sighted it: Pleasant Island.\n\nBut Pleasant Island held a secret. One hinted at by the cries of those birds.\n\nBack in the ancient past, Nauru had repeatedly risen and sunk beneath the waves. As a result, the coral at its center became covered in marine deposits. Deposits that were later added to by migrating birds emptying their bowels over it across millions of years.\n\nTrapped between jagged spikes of coral in the island's center, those marine and bird deposits eventually formed phosphate of astonishing purity. Phosphate, a chunk of which some forgotten person had mistaken for petrified wood, and brought back to Sydney, leaving it right where Ellis would find it.\n\nAs a trained geologist, Ellis was all too aware what phosphate could be used for: as a fertilizer that produced spectacular harvests.\n\nMore to the point, he knew what it was worth. After taking a trip to Nauru and confirming the extent of the deposits, Ellis reported back that the Nauruans were living atop an island forged from the whitest of golds.\n\nSo, his colleagues did what any corporation would do in that period. They struck an agreement with Nauru's colonial overlords to exploit Topside for all it was worth.\n\nStarting in 1905—first under German supervision and then Australian, after Canberra annexed Nauru in World War One—the newly-renamed Pacific Phosphate Company oversaw the strip-mining of Nauru's interior.\n\nUnlike underground mining, strip mining involves removing all the rocks and soil above a deposit, turning the whole site into an open-cast pit.\n\nThe advantage of this method is that it's cheap. The disadvantage, is that it's unbelievably destructive.\n\nOn Topside, trees, ferns, and bushes that had grown there for decades were cleared. The topsoil was removed, and the phosphate below it extracted, leaving behind a wasteland that could never be used again.\n\nAs early as 1921, a visiting *National Geographic* reporter was able to write of the process:\n\n> \"A worked-out phosphate field is a dismal, ghastly tract of land.\"\n\nLittle could they have known, but Nauru's age of exploitation was only just beginning.\n\n## Plunder and Pillage\n\nDespite plundering Nauru for its resources, interwar-era Australians weren't total dicks about it.\n\nAs the island's new colonial masters, they paid local landowners royalties for the regions they were mining, and even set up a couple of trust funds for the Nauruan people, using profits from the sale of phosphate.\n\nBut, whilst this may have been enlightened exploitation, it was still exploitation, as can be seen in the cut of profits offered to the Nauruans. As the *MIT Reader* put it:\n\n> \"The mining of Nauru's phosphate was not outright theft; however, the Nauruan share was tiny considering the profits, damage, and cost of restoring mined land.\"\n\nAs the years passed, that damage was only growing.\n\nWith more and more foreigners taking over the island, Nauruan indigenous culture was effectively wiped out. Australian and European practices replaced traditional ones. The old Nauruan religion was replaced by Christianity.\n\nNor was the tiny cut of profits the islanders were receiving as big as it should've been.\n\nDespite exporting 200,000 tons of phosphate annually, Canberra was selling the island's reserves at well under market value—part of a plan to give its own farmers, and those of Britain and New Zealand, a competitive edge.\n\nAgain, this wasn't the worst act of colonization in history. When the Empire of Japan seized Nauru during WWII, it conducted a genocidal campaign that killed a quarter of the population.\n\nStill, \"not as bad as Imperial Japan\" is a pretty low bar to set yourself. Which may be why pangs of conscience convinced Australia to offer the Nauruans a brand-new island to resettle in 1963.\n\nBut Nauru's people didn't want some random new island. They wanted their island. The one their people had lived on for thousands of years. The one Australia—in league with Britain and New Zealand—seemed so intent on destroying.\n\nBy now, a third of Nauru had been strip mined. A swathe of land in the island's south had disappeared, replaced by jagged limestone pillars.\n\nIronically, it was this destruction that would soon see Canberra lose control of its colony.\n\nThe engine for Nauru's eventual independence was local council leader Hammer deRoburt.\n\nEducated in Australia, deRoburt was a master at speaking to the colonists in ways they could understand. Of using the example of Nauru's strip mined south to eloquently push the case for the island's independence.\n\nBy the late-1960s, it was clear the world was on his side. Rather than fight to hold onto the colony, Canberra let Nauru slip through its fingers.\n\nAt the moment Nauru stepped, blinking, into the bright light of independence in 1968, the island was the smallest republic in the world.\n\nThe only smaller countries—Monaco and Vatican City—were both monarchies. Among democracies, Nauru was uniquely tiny.\n\nAnd that meant it came with a unique set of challenges. One that made many wonder if this microscopic new nation could survive.\n\nAside from phosphate mining, the nation had no local industry. The problem was, everyone could see that the remaining deposits would run out in a generation or so. A generation, in which the island's interior would be completely destroyed.\n\nIt's here that we get to the relevance of Nauru's story to our planet today.\n\nLike many of us in 2023, the Nauruans in 1968 were faced with a choice. Change their behavior, and try to preserve what remained of their paradise? Or keep on as they had before, and trust that economic growth today could shield against ecological disaster tomorrow?\n\nIn the end, Hammer deRoburt and his fellow Nauruan elites chose the latter.\n\nIt was a decision that would make them fabulously rich… while also condemning their descendants to lives of desperate poverty.\n\n## The Age of Wonders\n\n\"We had money, it was like partying every day and no one thought of the future.\"\n\nIn 2008, this was how landowner Doneke Kepae described Nauru's boom years to the *Telegraph*.\n\nWhile Kepae's reminisces were tinged with dark shades of regret, that quote gets at something essential about life on the island in the two decades post-independence.\n\nLiving through it was like taking part in the biggest, most-destructive party the world has ever thrown.\n\nForget 1980s New York, or Bubble-era Tokyo, or Klondike during the gold rush. Nauru in the '70s and '80s was a place where easy money and giddy excitement combined to create a lethal cocktail of hedonism.\n\nFirst, the expensive-but-reasonable stuff. The ways the government splashed out to ensure all citizens took part in this boom.\n\nAt the Scandinavian end of the scale, this involved making all public services free. Healthcare, education, dental care… even public transport was completely subsidized.\n\nFurther up the scale, the government would also pay to put students through prestigious Australian universities. Housing was subsidized, too, with monthly rent costing a mere $15.76 in today's money!\n\nFinally, at the top end of the scale, is the part that might almost be called \"socialism with money\". The part where the government guaranteed a job for anyone who wanted one, and abolished all forms of income tax so people could enjoy their earnings.\n\nAs the *New York Times* put it in 1982:\n\n> \"Nauru comes close to being the ultimate welfare state.\"\n\nBut then, President deRoburt and his government could afford to be generous.\n\nWith around two million tons of phosphate being extracted every year, Nauru was raking in the equivalent in today's dollars of 2.5 billion annually. By 1975, a royalties trust designed to act as insurance against the future had crossed the one billion Australian dollars mark.\n\nWhat the government didn't save, it was more than happy to spend. And it's here we come to our second tally of expenditure: the completely unreasonable things Nauru blew its money on.\n\nDespite being a nation of only around 10,000 citizens, Nauru owned a fleet of cruise ships and overseas hotels; as well as a loss-making airline that flew all over the Pacific.\n\nOfficials blew piles of cash on luxury cars—including an infamous local police chief who imported a Lamborghini, only to realize he was too overweight to fit inside it. Hammer deRoburt, meanwhile, took a limousine to work every day.\n\nAnd, just in case you'd forgotten, here's a quick reminder that this is all in a country with a single road. One which covers a mere 30 km.\n\nQuestionable as these purchases were, though, they've got nothing on the buildings.\n\nDuring the boom years, the Nauruan government went on a buying spree so wild, it managed to do with real estate what Imelda Marcos once did with shoes.\n\nExpensive hotels in Sydney and Carlton were snapped up, as were properties on Guam, Samoa, and in the Marshall Islands. An office building topped with a revolving restaurant was built in the Northern Marianas for $7m. $400,000 was blown on a floating cocktail lounge.\n\nBut the bloated cherry atop this wasteful cake has to be Nauru House in Melbourne.\n\nStanding 50 storeys high, it was built at a cost of $45m. Speaking to the *Times*, President deRoburt proudly claimed of the buildings, airlines, and cruise ships:\n\n> \"These are very deliberately promoted operations that we think in the long run will pay.\"\n\nYet for all the staggering waste on display so far, perhaps nothing can compare to the West End musical.\n\nYes, you heard that right. Toward the end of the boom—in the early 1990s—the Nauruan government decided to spend $7m funding a musical about the life of Leonardo DaVinci.\n\nIt's at this point that the tale of Nauru can't help but descend into farce.\n\nWritten by the former roadie of a British one-hit wonder band—and featuring scenes in which DaVinci slaps the Mona Lisa on the arse to seduce her—the musical got financed after the Nauruan president's advisor played him a demo tape.\n\nOpening in London in 1993, it was the closest real-life equivalent yet staged to *Springtime for Hitler*. The thing became a legendary bomb.\n\nBut while Mel Brooks's producers had a canny scheme for making money off a stage failure, the same sadly can't be said for Nauru's government.\n\nNot that those in charge particularly cared.\n\nIn 1982, it was officially estimated that—by the time the phosphate ran out—the Nauruan trust fund would be holding more than a billion dollars. Enough to keep every single Nauruan family in comfort for generations.\n\nAt least, that was the official version. Unofficially, though, it was clear Nauru's savings weren't all they were claimed to be.\n\nWhen the *Times* visited the island, they were told by an anonymous official that the government had (quote): \"a chronic cash-flow problem\". Rumors were already spreading that the money hadn't been invested wisely.\n\nPerhaps the attitude of Nauru's elites is best summed up by a quote from former finance minister James Bop, when the *Times* asked him if he wasn't worried:\n\n> \"It is a worry,\" he said, \"but we have a motto in Nauruan (...) It means, 'Tomorrow will take care of itself.'\"\n\nSadly for regular Nauruans, that motto would turn out to be extremely misguided.\n\n## The Age of Armageddon\n\nOne aspect of Nauru's boom that often gets left out of these stories, is that it didn't apply equally to everyone.\n\nWhile the local elites were importing sports cars, and—in one notable instance—literally using money to wipe their asses, ordinary Nauruans saw very little of the phosphate dollars flowing through their economy.\n\nThe average income on the island was between $5,000 and $6,000 a year—or equivalent to just under $20,000 today. Nor were the government handouts enough to buy people off. There's evidence that many regular citizens could see the coming consequences of this wasteful spending, and were desperate to stop it.\n\nThe day the Leonardo musical premiered in London, for example, 100 elites were meant to fly out to watch it. But they almost didn't make it when protestors rushed the airport, demanding the government stop pissing their money away.\n\nBy this point, Hammer deRoburt was dead. Yet the government had carried on his image: still relying on the income from phosphate to survive.\n\nThe trouble was, that phosphate was about to run out.\n\nAt the end of the 1980s, Nauru had been exporting 2 million tons a year. By the end of the 1990s, that had dropped to half a million.\n\nCome 2005, it would hit a record low of just 8,000 tons. And while investments in new equipment would soon allow harder-to-reach phosphate to be harvested, post-2005 annual exports would never exceed 45,000 tons.\n\nAs the phosphate ran out, so did the money.\n\nWith good investments, it's been estimated that Nauru's trust fund could've been worth eight billion Australian dollars by 2004. Instead, wasteful spending, bad investments, and money lost to scams meant the trust fund's true size was under $30 million.\n\nThe price of that paltry sum? The total destruction of their homeland.\n\nBy the mid-1990s, 80 percent of Nauru had been strip mined. Where there had once been trees and wildlife there was now only a desert of jagged rocks—one on which nothing could ever again be grown or built.\n\nYou know that Joni Mitchell song, where she sings about how they paved paradise and put up a parking lot?\n\nWell, at least the \"They\" in that song got a parking lot out of it. All Nauru got was a failed musical, and an economy based solely on resource extraction.\n\nSo, you can probably guess what happened when the resources ran out.\n\nThe end of phosphate mining did to Nauruan society what a well-aimed grenade does to the interior of a clown car. Turned what had once been amusing excess into a depressing mess.\n\nWith no money, all those free government services collapsed. Not just the transport and healthcare, but also the entire schooling system. Unemployment peaked at 90 percent.\n\nYet, for all the economic woes of post-boom Nauru, it was the ecological ones that really stood out.\n\nPhosphate mining hadn't just created a desolate wasteland that could never be healed. It had also poisoned the island's waters; and left the interior covered in fine, toxic particles. Particles that get kicked up when the wind blows, and create breathing problems.\n\nWith no arable land, and nowhere to forage, it had left the entire population dependent on food imports. Imports that came in the form of highly-processed foods—contributing to the ongoing obesity and diabetes epidemics.\n\nImagine, for a second, how jarring this must've been. The whiplash that must accompany a switch from \"second richest nation on the planet,\" to \"broke guys living in an environmental wasteland\".\n\nNot that the government didn't try to find new revenue streams.\n\nAt the saner-end of the spectrum, that involved taking Australia to court for its decades of mismanagement prior to independence.\n\nIn 1994, Canberra settled the case, agreeing to pay $57m upfront, followed by another $50m over 20 years. The UK and New Zealand each paid an additional $12m for their role as Nauru's joint custodians.\n\nAt the less-sane end, though, it involved doing some stuff that would do to Nauru's reputation what phosphate mining had done to the environment.\n\nUtterly destroy it.\n\n## No Exit\n\nThe term \"offshore banking\" probably conjures some specific images. Images that mix pleasant stuff like palm trees and white sand beaches, with others of extremely wealthy people laughing as they refuse to give even a penny to the taxman.\n\nIn Nauru's case, though, the government's foray into banking didn't just help the rich evade taxes. It also helped some of the nastiest, most-violent people on Earth launder colossal sums of money.\n\nTo make their state attractive to financiers, the government didn't require banks to have any physical presence on the island—not even a mailbox. Nor did it require them to keep any records.\n\nAs a result, the sort of people interested in banking on Nauru were the exact sort of people who need to hide massive transfers of money from the authorities. The Russian mafia alone is estimated to have laundered over a billion dollars through the island.\n\nThe craziest part? Russian mobsters weren't even the island's shadiest customers. That honor probably goes to al-Qaeda, who banked with Nauru in the run-up to 9/11.\n\nNor was it just banking services Nauru offered these criminals.\n\nBy the mid-1990s, officials were openly selling passports. Now, that's something some countries do even in this day and age—Dominica and North Macedonia, for example, will give you citizenship in exchange for large sums of money.\n\nNauru's government, though, didn't just sell regular passports. According to the *Guardian* it sold diplomatic passports. As in, the documents that provide immunity from prosecution to the holder.\n\nAnd when a state is selling diplomatic immunity, while also courting al-Qaeda and the Russian mafia…\n\n…well, you can see how that might be just the teeny tiniest bit worrying.\n\nWhen the backlash eventually hit, it was immense. So immense, that it dwarfed even the millions of dollars a year Nauru was receiving in banking fees.\n\nIn 2002, the US declared the country a money laundering state. Sanctions were slapped on it that equaled those placed on Saddam Hussein's Iraq.\n\nThe pressure was enough to force Nauru to pass anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing laws. But, with no other source of income, enforcing those laws soon left Nauru poorer than ever.\n\nCompletely broke, the island nation was forced to watch as creditors repossessed its airplanes, cruise ships, and foreign real estate. Even the 50-storey Nauru House in Melbourne was sold off.\n\nDuring this bleak period, just about the only way the government had to make money was by offering recognition to unrecognized states.\n\nThis included recognizing Russian-backed separatists in places like Abkhazia. In 2003, it also involved taking a massive bribe from China to sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan… only for the government to then take money from Taipei to reestablish relations two years later.\n\nAside from that, Nauru's only revenue came from hosting an offshore detention center for Australia. An act that saw it receive millions of dollars per year in visa fees to house asylum seekers Canberra refused to process on its home turf.\n\nBut while \"millions of dollars a year\" might sound like a lot, the truth is that none of these activities were able to support the economy.\n\nSo, Nauru kept doing what it had always done. It kept right on mining for phosphate.\n\nIf you need a handy metaphor for pointless, self-destructive behavior, it's hard to find a better one than this. In 2018, the *Guardian* reported that Nauru was digging up enough phosphate to make $22m.\n\nThe problem? The cost of mining it was $27.5m. The government was losing over $5m a year to dig up the last remaining chunks of land that had yet to be strip mined.\n\nNow, that's not to say phosphate will never again play a major role in Nauru's economy.\n\nWith the primary reserves of Topside gone, the country is now considering how to mine its secondary reserves. Chunks of phosphate buried so deep or so hard to get that cost-effective extraction has only recently become viable.\n\nThese secondary reserves may total as much as 20 million metric tons. Enough, perhaps, to create a mini-boom.\n\nYet, even if phosphate again lifts Nauru's economy, it's not a sustainable solution to the country's woes. And who knows what ecological damage it might cause to the remaining 20 percent of the island that's still inhabitable?\n\nTo give some idea of just how destructive phosphate mining has been, consider this anecdote. Since 1993, the Nauru Rehabilitation Corporation has spent $135m trying to repair land that's been strip mined.\n\nIn all that time, it's managed to revive just 10 hectares—part of an area known as Pit 6. That's a mere fraction of the 400 hectares originally planned for rehabilitation. At this rate, it'll take over 1,000 years to reach their target.\n\nThis, then, is where we began. With Nauru in poverty, and its citizens trapped on the edges of an environmental nightmare. Clinging on to the last habitable tracts of land, even as their government considers mining further.\n\nBy now, you can doubtless see why so many view Nauru's tale as a parable for humanity. A wake-up call for a species that seems determined to keep degrading its planet, even as wildfires multiply and heatwaves bring entire cities to their knees.\n\nHowever, it's not climate change that we want to end talking about, but another potential ecological catastrophe. A catastrophe that could be the second great environmental disaster Nauru has been at the center of.\n\nOne that won't take place on Topside, but at the bottom of the ocean.\n\n## First as Tragedy, Then as Farce\n\nWere someone to place a deep-sea polymetallic nodule in your hand, chances are you'd be pretty unimpressed.\n\nAbout the size of a potato, these nodules are basically smooth brown rocks that exist at the bottom of the ocean. Lying on the seabed some 4 km below the surface—what Americans might call either \"two and a half miles\" or \"a whole bunch of football pitches\".\n\nBut make no mistake. While these nodules may look small and unimpressive on the outside, it's in the same way that Mob appears a scrawny, boring middle schooler from afar.\n\nDeep inside, both contain a spectacular secret. In Mob's case, it's ESP. In the nodules' case, it's the ability to save the world.\n\nThe makeup of these nodules, see, is stuff like cobalt, nickel, and manganese. Minerals that just happen to be key to building the batteries that will dominate the green energy revolution.\n\nThis is important, because the International Energy Agency predicts a four-fold increase in demand for these minerals by 2040, as humanity struggles to quickly transition off fossil fuels. The problem, is that terrestrial mining may not be able to keep up with demand.\n\nThis is where the nodules come in. Found in rich fields on the seabed, they're particularly clustered in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone—a 4.5 million sq km slice of the Pacific.\n\nUnfortunately for the companies that want to harvest them, though, it's not quite as simple as just buying a boat, sailing west from California, and making bare profit.\n\nNo. According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the waters outside each nation's exclusive economic zone are places of \"common heritage\".\n\nIf you want to do any industrial work there, you'll need the UN's International Seabed Authority to agree. And, to get that agreement, you must be sponsored by a recognized nation state.\n\nA nation state like, say, a certain tiny Pacific island in desperate need of cash.\n\nAs you'll have guessed by now, the state Canada's The Metals Company (or TMC) has teamed up with to harvest these nodules is none other than Nauru.\n\nWell, technically, it's Nauru, plus Kiribati, and Tonga.\n\nBut Nauru is especially important, and not just because it was the first nation to come onboard. It was also the nation that fired the starting gun on nodule harvesting.\n\nThe first licenses for exploiting these nodules were granted way back in 2011. But the International Seabed Authority dragged its feet on designing regulations to carry out the work—in large part because of worries about environmental damage.\n\nBut, the ISA's rules include a loophole. One which states that the body must approve official applications within two years, even in the absence of regulations.\n\nIn July of 2021, Nauru went ahead and submitted its application, triggering a 24-month countdown until mining could begin.\n\nSince you're the sort of intelligent, dashing person who reads articles like this; you're already aware that July, 2021 was more than two years ago. So, you might reasonably ask, what happened with Nauru's application?\n\nWell, we're going to leave you hanging, I'm afraid. A little mystery to tantalize you, that we'll answer in the final chapter.\n\nBefore we do that, though, we need to grapple with the effects Nauru's application had. Why it sparked a wave of global outrage—from Fiji to France.\n\nThe very real worry, that deep sea mining may be this generation's phosphate mining.\n\nIn other words, that Nauru may have fired the starting gun on a whole additional environmental apocalypse.\n\n## The Second Catastrophe?\n\nThe process of extracting polymetallic nodules from the seabed is relatively straightforward—to explain, if not actually to do.\n\nUsing heavy machinery, companies will hoover up a whole lot of seabed, collecting the nodules on ships which will then return them to land for processing.\n\nBut while that might sound pretty simple, it obscures a whole host of complex issues. Not least of which is the way this resource extraction might impact the ocean floor.\n\nAs the *New York Times* put it:\n\n> \"Scientists say that more is known about the surface of the moon than about the floor of the ocean (...) perhaps 90 percent of the species at the bottom of the Pacific remain unclassified.\"\n\nThat means we can't even begin to predict how removing these nodules will disturb marine ecosystems. Even if most scientists are sure that the impacts will be more than negligible.\n\nFor example, the machinery is likely to churn up sediment at a spectacular rate, potentially destroying fragile habitats.\n\nEven if it doesn't, there's the chance that toxic metals will be among those sediments churned up. Toxic metals that may be swept upwards in plumes, dragged high into the water to poison marine lifeforms.\n\nOthers point to the potential for noise from the machinery to damage the ability of whales to communicate with one another. Something that could lead to massive disruption in their lifecycles.\n\nMostly, though, people are worried that we're going to just go out and start destroying something we don't really understand. And the long-term effects of that might be horrifying.\n\nAs the *New Yorker* reported last year:\n\n> \"Hundreds of marine scientists have signed a statement warning that this would be an ecological disaster resulting in damage 'irreversible on multi-generational timescales.'\"\n\nOne of the slightly-galling things about this, is that this damage won't be happening in Nauru's waters.\n\nSituated between Hawaii and Mexico, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is thousands of kilometers from the barren desert of Topside. An environmental disaster here would affect many different places.\n\nThat may be why there's been a concerted push at the UN to place a moratorium on deep sea mining. A push that includes Pacific states like Fiji, Chile, Panama, Palau, Costa Rica and New Zealand; but also Atlantic nations like Ireland, France, and Sweden.\n\nStanding against them, are countries that have already sponsored exploration contracts. Countries like China, South Korea, Russia, Jamaica, Brazil, Japan, and France.\n\nAnd, yes, France absolutely appeared on both of those lists! Talk about \"having your baguette and eating it\".\n\nNow, we need to be clear at this point, that the potential impact on the seabed is far from settled science.\n\nThe Metals Company—the one Nauru is sponsoring—claims that nodule extraction will be less-damaging than land-based mining. The Seabed Authority, meanwhile, is at pains to stress that work will only be allowed in 60 percent of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. A whole 1.96 million sq km will be preserved as a pristine environment.\n\nYet it may be the official position of Nauru itself that is the most-interesting of all.\n\nBecause, rather than an economic activity, the Nauruan government describes deep sea mining as something far more existential. A way to save the last habitable part of their damaged nation.\n\nWith climate change already underway, sea levels are expected to rise in the coming decades.\n\nWhile this will suck for everyone, it will be especially awful for low-lying island nations. Although Nauru isn't as low-lying as some, the destruction of Topside means the only inhabitable parts are very close to the waves.\n\nAccording to Nauru's Ambassador to the International Seabed Authority, Margo Deiye, her country is destined to vanish unless the green transition happens extremely soon. And making the world's economy green will require a gigantic increase in certain minerals.\n\nDeep sea mining can help with that. TMC estimates that there are enough nodules down there to power 280 million electric vehicles. 280 million vehicles, that would otherwise be farting out planet-frying gases.\n\nOr, as Margo Deiye has said:\n\n> \"The misunderstanding is that any human activity does not have risks – every activity has risks. But the risk of not doing anything with this current climate crisis, is much bigger for us and it's an existential threat for the Pacific.\"\n\nThese, then, are the two sides that stand opposed in this debate. One which believes extracting the seabed's resources could cause a catastrophe; and another that believes a bigger catastrophe is already happening right now, and we have to do everything we can to try and stop it.\n\nAs to who is in the right, we can't really say. Unlike George Costanza, we've never claimed to be marine biologists.\n\nBut what we can say, is that the stakes are high. And, as we move into the final chapter, it's with a massive question hanging over everything.\n\nWhat if we don't figure out who's right, until it's already too late?\n\n## Watching the World Burn\n\nWhen the *New York Times* did a little digging into the contract between TMC and Nauru, what they found didn't exactly paint a flattering picture.\n\nAccording to their reporting, Nauru would receive a tiny fraction of the profits from deep sea mining. While the exact amount has never been disclosed, the paper did speak to a community leader from the co-sponsoring nation of Tonga, who said his country had been offered $2 a ton.\n\nWere the same fee applied to Nauru, that would mean the island nation stands to receive less than 0.5 percent of all profits TMC makes from deep sea mining.\n\nAs former Tonga parliament member Lord Fusitu'a told the paper of record:\n\n> \"This company set out to game the system and use a poor, developing Pacific nation as the conduit to exploit these resources.\"\n\nYou may not be surprised to learn that this is a claim TMC vigorously disputes. Nonetheless, such a setup leaves a bad taste in the mouth—reminiscent, as it is, of Nauru's past exploitation.\n\nIt also implies that the fight against climate change may be just a convenient fig leaf. A way for Nauru to ensure some much-needed income, in the guise of fighting the good fight.\n\nWith Australia's offshore detention centers coming to an end, the island is about to lose one of its few revenue streams.\n\nIn such a dire scenario, even a mere half a percent of whatever TMC makes would have a positive impact on the Nauruan economy.\n\nBut that's only if the mining ever gets going.\n\nSo, remember back when we said Nauru had fired the starting gun on a two-year countdown to resource extraction, back in July of 2021?\n\nWell, despite the loophole that should've allowed TMC to start mining by now, the International Seabed Authority managed to delay the process, giving it more time to finalize regulations.\n\nAt time of writing, it's now thought that no resource extraction will take place until early 2025. Later than the 2024 date TMC had initially penciled in, but not remarkably so.\n\nWhen that date arrives, we'll finally see for certain what the truth is. Whether Nauru is today helping lead the charge toward the green energy revolution that'll save our planet… or simply playing a bit part in yet another tale of human greed and ecological disaster. A new Topside for the 21st Century.\n\nThe scary part is, we'll probably only know with hindsight.\n\nWhile the destruction of Topside—the wrecking of Nauru—was a tale foretold, it was all too easy to overlook the gloomy predictions in the moment.\n\nAll too easy for first Arthur F. Ellis, then the Australian colonists, and finally the Nauruan elite to ignore the Cassandras. To quietly tell themselves that, by the time the phosphate ran out, they'd have fixed the problem. That the miracles of money would allow them to escape the consequences of their shortsighted actions.\n\nIt's a tale everyone reading this will see some horrible parallels in.\n\nAs Antarctic ice levels drop and oceans overheat; as scientists sound warning alarms; how many of our leaders today act like the Nauruan elite of yore? How many shrug and say \"tomorrow will take care of itself,\" even as they ensure that tomorrow will be anything but fine.\n\nAnd now here we are, with deep sea mining. Potentially standing at the edge of another catastrophe. Another moment when a narrow elite adds up the costs, and decides the benefits to them outweighs the risk to everyone else.\n\nIt's reasons like this that explain why Nauru's story resonates so strongly today. The story of how the richest country in the world destroyed itself.\n\nFittingly, it's a resonance the Nauruans themselves are only too aware of.\n\nBack in 2011, then-president Marcus Stephen wrote a guest column for the *Times*, where he set out the parable of Nauru's self-inflicted apocalypse:\n\n> \"I am not looking for sympathy,\" he wrote, \"but rather warning you what can happen when a country runs out of options. The world is headed down a similar path with the relentless burning of coal and oil, which is altering the planet's climate, melting ice caps, making oceans more acidic and edging us ever closer to a day when no one will be able to take clean water, fertile soil or abundant food for granted (...)\n\n> I forgive you if you have never heard of Nauru — but you will not forgive yourselves if you ignore our story.\"\n\nIt's a story that, over 12 years later, is more relevant to our planet's future than it has ever been.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- Nauru's wealth was built on phosphate mining, which destroyed 80% of its land.\n- The island's elite squandered its resources, leading to poverty and environmental degradation.\n- Nauru's experience serves as a warning about the dangers of unchecked resource exploitation.\n- The island is now considering deep-sea mining, raising concerns about environmental impact.\n- Nauru's story highlights the risks of prioritizing short-term gains over long-term sustainability.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### What is the current state of Nauru's environment?\n\nNauru is an ecological nightmare. About 80% of the land is a toxic desert with jagged limestone peaks and fine, irritating dust where nothing can grow. The only habitable part is a 274m-wide zone around the island.\n\n### How did Nauru become so wealthy in the 1980s?\n\nNauru became wealthy due to the mining of phosphate, a fertilizer that produced spectacular harvests. The island was per capita one of the richest nations on Earth in the early 1980s.\n\n### What caused Nauru's economic downfall?\n\nNauru's economic downfall was caused by the depletion of its phosphate reserves and the mismanagement of its sovereign wealth fund. The government spent extravagantly and made poor investments, leading to financial ruin.\n\n### What health issues are prevalent among Nauru's population?\n\nNauru has extreme rates of obesity, diabetes, smoking, and alcoholism. The population also faces high rates of domestic violence and other antisocial behaviors.\n\n### What is the significance of the doorstop found in Sydney in 1899?\n\nThe doorstop, mistaken for petrified wood, was actually a chunk of phosphate. Its discovery led to the exploitation of Nauru's phosphate reserves, which ultimately destroyed the island's environment.\n\n### What was the impact of phosphate mining on Nauru's environment?\n\nPhosphate mining turned much of Nauru into a wasteland. It contaminated the groundwater, left the interior covered in toxic particles, and destroyed the island's ability to grow food or support wildlife.\n\n### What role did Australia play in Nauru's history?\n\nAustralia annexed Nauru after World War I and oversaw the strip-mining of its phosphate reserves. While Australia paid royalties and set up trust funds, the exploitation was still destructive and left Nauru in a dire state after independence.\n\n### What is Nauru's current economic situation?\n\nNauru is currently broke and near-uninhabitable. It faces high unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, and relies on highly-processed imported foods. The government has resorted to desperate measures like selling passports and hosting offshore detention centers.\n\n### What is deep sea mining and how is Nauru involved?\n\nDeep sea mining involves extracting polymetallic nodules from the ocean floor, which contain minerals crucial for green energy technologies. Nauru, in partnership with The Metals Company, has submitted an application to start deep sea mining, sparking global controversy.\n\n### What are the potential environmental impacts of deep sea mining?\n\nDeep sea mining could destroy fragile marine habitats, churn up toxic sediments, and disrupt marine life. Scientists warn that the long-term effects could be catastrophic and irreversible.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Original Places video: Nauru: How the Richest Country in the World Destroyed Itself](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow3arhB18xM)\n- [https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/dark-history-nauru/](https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/dark-history-nauru/)\n- [https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/07/magazine/world-s-richest-little-isle.html](https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/07/magazine/world-s-richest-little-isle.html)\n- [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/10/a-short-history-of-nauru-australias-dumping-ground-for-refugees](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/10/a-short-history-of-nauru-australias-dumping-ground-for-refugees)\n- [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/04/corruption-incompetence-and-a-musical-naurus-riches-to-rags-tale](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/04/corruption-incompetence-and-a-musical-naurus-riches-to-rags-tale)\n- [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/29/world/deep-sea-mining.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/29/world/deep-sea-mining.html)\n- [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/08/future-of-deep-sea-mining-hangs-in-balance-as-opposition-grows](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/08/future-of-deep-sea-mining-hangs-in-balance-as-opposition-grows)\n- [https://www.smh.com.au/world/oceania/going-broke-and-sinking-nauru-wants-to-mine-the-ocean-floor-20230610-p5dfiy.html](https://www.smh.com.au/world/oceania/going-broke-and-sinking-nauru-wants-to-mine-the-ocean-floor-20230610-p5dfiy.html)\n- [https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/7/9/nauru-prepares-to-mine-deep-seas-in-big-climate-controversy](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/7/9/nauru-prepares-to-mine-deep-seas-in-big-climate-controversy)\n- [https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/the-secret-history-of-nauru-and-its-lost-wealth/7496620](https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/the-secret-history-of-nauru-and-its-lost-wealth/7496620)\n- [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/fertiliser-island-scents-musical-success-first-night-leonardo-1489451.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/fertiliser-island-scents-musical-success-first-night-leonardo-1489451.html)\n- [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/03/mining-the-bottom-of-the-sea](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/03/mining-the-bottom-of-the-sea)\n- [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/opinion/19stephen.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/opinion/19stephen.html)\n- [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/23/us/politics/pacific-seabed-mining-delayed.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/23/us/politics/pacific-seabed-mining-delayed.html)\n- [Hero image source](https://images.rawpixel.com/editor_1024/czNmcy1wcml2YXRlL3Jhd3BpeGVsX2ltYWdlcy93ZWJzaXRlX2NvbnRlbnQvbHIvdXB3azYxNjkzODU2LXdpa2ltZWRpYS1pbWFnZS1rb3dsbDVsMS5qcGc.jpg) by openverse, cc0.\n\n## Related Coverage"
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<!-- aeo:section start="lede" -->
It feels like a scene from a climate-change dystopia. A world in which 80 percent of all land has been rendered uninhabitable by human greed—once lush forests replaced by a toxic desert. A world in which the groundwater is poisoned, and all humanity forced to live on a narrow, survivable strip between desert and ocean, even as the waves rise ever higher.

No, this isn't the synopsis for some new Netflix satire; a much-more depressing companion piece to 2021's *Don't Look Up*. The place I just described really exists. A real-life island state that today stands as a dark warning to the rest of the world.

That island's name is Nauru. And it was ground zero for an environmental apocalypse.

It wasn't meant to be this way. In the early-1980s, Nauru was—per capita—one of the richest nations on Earth. Its government oversaw a sovereign wealth fund sufficient to keep its entire population in luxury for centuries to come.

Yet these days, the nation stands as a broke, near-uninhabitable wasteland. A place of poverty and desperation.

<!-- aeo:section end="lede" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="paradise-lost" -->
## Paradise Lost

Picture your idea of an island paradise.

We're guessing it might be somewhere tropical, near the equator. We're guessing, also, that it'll be isolated—far from the maddening crowd. Somewhere with clear waters, white sand, and natural riches.

Somewhere, in other words, like Nauru.

A tiny speck of land a third the size of Manhattan, the Republic of Nauru sits a mere 48 km south of the equator, out in the Pacific's wild blue yonder.

Populated by a mere 12,511 people, it's over 300 km away from the nearest other island, Banaba— itself the extreme westernmost part of Kiribati. The only place its airline regularly flies to—Brisbane in Australia—is thousands of kilometers distant.

Nor is it just where isolation is concerned that Nauru seems like the perfect getaway.

A raised coral atoll ringed by white sand dotted with palm trees, Nauru from the air appears Insta-ready. The sort of place depressed office workers dream about escaping to.

But look a little closer, and you'll start to see that this is all just an illusion. A mirage created by distance and expectation.

As your plane gets closer, it'll quickly become apparent that—rather than a tropical paradise—Nauru is instead an ecological nightmare.

That ring of sand and palm trees around the island? Well, it turns out that's the only habitable part. A 274m-wide zone, where nearly all life on Nauru is forced to take place.

The bulk of the island's 21 sq km is nothing but toxic desert. A world of jagged limestone peaks and fine, irritating dust where nothing can grow.

Known as Topside, it spent decades as the source of Nauru's unmatched wealth.

Today, though, Topside is responsible for all the nation's ills. The place that contaminated much of the sparse groundwater, leaving the population reliant on a malfunctioning desalination plant. The moonscape where nothing can be cultivated, leading to locals' dependence on highly-processed imported foods.

Speaking of the locals, they're thought to be some of the sickest people on Earth.

With extreme rates of obesity, Nauru is one of the world's fattest nations, as well as one with among the highest rates of smoking, diabetes, and alcoholism.

That last one in turn gives rise to high rates of domestic violence, and other antisocial behavior like drunk driving—a weirdly impressive feat when you consider the island has only a single road.

Not that the sense of sickness stops with the citizens.

*MIT Reader* ran an article in 2019 about what life is like on the island, which included the grim sentence:

> "Desperation seems to pervade all of Nauru."

Among other problems the article listed, were the high rate of unemployment; the crumbling houses and aging infrastructure; and the rotting garbage piled high on the roadside.

In short, the vibe on Nauru is less "Pacific island getaway" and more "post-apocalyptic sci-fi". One where the main threat isn't zombies, but a suffocating sense of despair, caused by ecological breakdown.

Because, make no mistake, this microscopic nation didn't always look like this.

Just 40 years ago, it was the envy of the world.

In the 1980s, Nauruans were second only to Saudis in terms of wealth as GDP per capita. Locals drove luxury sports cars and used money as toilet paper. The government owned a fleet of cruise ships and a loss-making airline, and once blew $400,000 on what the *New York Times* called a "floating cocktail lounge".

Citizens were guaranteed employment, with free access to healthcare, education, and opportunities to study abroad. Meanwhile, a trust fund had already amassed $400m, and was projected to reach $1 billion by the 1990s—equivalent to roughly 2.3 billion in today's money. All for a nation of barely 12,000 people.

The obvious question then, is: what happened? What caused Nauru's spectacular nosedive from the pinnacle of global wealth rankings to somewhere near the bottom?

The answer lies not in some inherent fecklessness among the locals, but in an all-too human foible: greed. Greed on the part of outsiders, on the part of corporations, and—yes—on the part of Nauruan elites.

A rapacious greed that could one day leave the rest of the world as broken and benighted as Nauru.

<!-- aeo:section end="paradise-lost" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="after-the-white-gold-rush" -->
## After the White Gold Rush

When discussing the complexities of cause and effect, the cliche is to evoke a butterfly. Y'know, that old chestnut about how a single butterfly beating its wings in China can eventually cause a tornado in Delaware, or a man's pants to unexpectedly fall down in Ireland, or something equally absurd.

Really, though, the cliche should probably evoke doorstops in Australia. Because it was the precise placing of one such doorstop in 1899 that led to Nauru becoming a wasteland.

The exact sequence of events that brought that doorstop to the Sydney office of the Pacific Islands Company, has sadly been lost to history.

What we do know is that it came from Nauru. We know, too, that whoever found it assumed it was petrified wood.

Sadly for the fate of the island, there was someone working at that Sydney office who just happened to know a whole lot about petrified wood. Someone, who was both observant enough and boring enough to be all like: "mind if I borrow that doorstep to run some tests? It's not like I'm doing anything else this weekend!"

That observant-but-dull dude's name was Albert Fuller Ellis.

And it was his fateful encounter with that doorstop that would destroy Nauru's future more-assuredly than the beating wings of some random butterfly.

At the time Ellis was running his tests, Nauru looked very different. Closer to the perfect tropical island we discussed at the start.

Rather than a blasted desert, the interior of the island—the region known as Topside—was a place of almond and pandanus trees. A lush, green world filled with the cries of migrating birds.

So pristine was the place, that—despite being annexed by Germany—it still retained the name bestowed on it by the British man who first sighted it: Pleasant Island.

But Pleasant Island held a secret. One hinted at by the cries of those birds.

Back in the ancient past, Nauru had repeatedly risen and sunk beneath the waves. As a result, the coral at its center became covered in marine deposits. Deposits that were later added to by migrating birds emptying their bowels over it across millions of years.

Trapped between jagged spikes of coral in the island's center, those marine and bird deposits eventually formed phosphate of astonishing purity. Phosphate, a chunk of which some forgotten person had mistaken for petrified wood, and brought back to Sydney, leaving it right where Ellis would find it.

As a trained geologist, Ellis was all too aware what phosphate could be used for: as a fertilizer that produced spectacular harvests.

More to the point, he knew what it was worth. After taking a trip to Nauru and confirming the extent of the deposits, Ellis reported back that the Nauruans were living atop an island forged from the whitest of golds.

So, his colleagues did what any corporation would do in that period. They struck an agreement with Nauru's colonial overlords to exploit Topside for all it was worth.

Starting in 1905—first under German supervision and then Australian, after Canberra annexed Nauru in World War One—the newly-renamed Pacific Phosphate Company oversaw the strip-mining of Nauru's interior.

Unlike underground mining, strip mining involves removing all the rocks and soil above a deposit, turning the whole site into an open-cast pit.

The advantage of this method is that it's cheap. The disadvantage, is that it's unbelievably destructive.

On Topside, trees, ferns, and bushes that had grown there for decades were cleared. The topsoil was removed, and the phosphate below it extracted, leaving behind a wasteland that could never be used again.

As early as 1921, a visiting *National Geographic* reporter was able to write of the process:

> "A worked-out phosphate field is a dismal, ghastly tract of land."

Little could they have known, but Nauru's age of exploitation was only just beginning.

<!-- aeo:section end="after-the-white-gold-rush" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="plunder-and-pillage" -->
## Plunder and Pillage

Despite plundering Nauru for its resources, interwar-era Australians weren't total dicks about it.

As the island's new colonial masters, they paid local landowners royalties for the regions they were mining, and even set up a couple of trust funds for the Nauruan people, using profits from the sale of phosphate.

But, whilst this may have been enlightened exploitation, it was still exploitation, as can be seen in the cut of profits offered to the Nauruans. As the *MIT Reader* put it:

> "The mining of Nauru's phosphate was not outright theft; however, the Nauruan share was tiny considering the profits, damage, and cost of restoring mined land."

As the years passed, that damage was only growing.

With more and more foreigners taking over the island, Nauruan indigenous culture was effectively wiped out. Australian and European practices replaced traditional ones. The old Nauruan religion was replaced by Christianity.

Nor was the tiny cut of profits the islanders were receiving as big as it should've been.

Despite exporting 200,000 tons of phosphate annually, Canberra was selling the island's reserves at well under market value—part of a plan to give its own farmers, and those of Britain and New Zealand, a competitive edge.

Again, this wasn't the worst act of colonization in history. When the Empire of Japan seized Nauru during WWII, it conducted a genocidal campaign that killed a quarter of the population.

Still, "not as bad as Imperial Japan" is a pretty low bar to set yourself. Which may be why pangs of conscience convinced Australia to offer the Nauruans a brand-new island to resettle in 1963.

But Nauru's people didn't want some random new island. They wanted their island. The one their people had lived on for thousands of years. The one Australia—in league with Britain and New Zealand—seemed so intent on destroying.

By now, a third of Nauru had been strip mined. A swathe of land in the island's south had disappeared, replaced by jagged limestone pillars.

Ironically, it was this destruction that would soon see Canberra lose control of its colony.

The engine for Nauru's eventual independence was local council leader Hammer deRoburt.

Educated in Australia, deRoburt was a master at speaking to the colonists in ways they could understand. Of using the example of Nauru's strip mined south to eloquently push the case for the island's independence.

By the late-1960s, it was clear the world was on his side. Rather than fight to hold onto the colony, Canberra let Nauru slip through its fingers.

At the moment Nauru stepped, blinking, into the bright light of independence in 1968, the island was the smallest republic in the world.

The only smaller countries—Monaco and Vatican City—were both monarchies. Among democracies, Nauru was uniquely tiny.

And that meant it came with a unique set of challenges. One that made many wonder if this microscopic new nation could survive.

Aside from phosphate mining, the nation had no local industry. The problem was, everyone could see that the remaining deposits would run out in a generation or so. A generation, in which the island's interior would be completely destroyed.

It's here that we get to the relevance of Nauru's story to our planet today.

Like many of us in 2023, the Nauruans in 1968 were faced with a choice. Change their behavior, and try to preserve what remained of their paradise? Or keep on as they had before, and trust that economic growth today could shield against ecological disaster tomorrow?

In the end, Hammer deRoburt and his fellow Nauruan elites chose the latter.

It was a decision that would make them fabulously rich… while also condemning their descendants to lives of desperate poverty.

<!-- aeo:section end="plunder-and-pillage" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="the-age-of-wonders" -->
## The Age of Wonders

"We had money, it was like partying every day and no one thought of the future."

In 2008, this was how landowner Doneke Kepae described Nauru's boom years to the *Telegraph*.

While Kepae's reminisces were tinged with dark shades of regret, that quote gets at something essential about life on the island in the two decades post-independence.

Living through it was like taking part in the biggest, most-destructive party the world has ever thrown.

Forget 1980s New York, or Bubble-era Tokyo, or Klondike during the gold rush. Nauru in the '70s and '80s was a place where easy money and giddy excitement combined to create a lethal cocktail of hedonism.

First, the expensive-but-reasonable stuff. The ways the government splashed out to ensure all citizens took part in this boom.

At the Scandinavian end of the scale, this involved making all public services free. Healthcare, education, dental care… even public transport was completely subsidized.

Further up the scale, the government would also pay to put students through prestigious Australian universities. Housing was subsidized, too, with monthly rent costing a mere $15.76 in today's money!

Finally, at the top end of the scale, is the part that might almost be called "socialism with money". The part where the government guaranteed a job for anyone who wanted one, and abolished all forms of income tax so people could enjoy their earnings.

As the *New York Times* put it in 1982:

> "Nauru comes close to being the ultimate welfare state."

But then, President deRoburt and his government could afford to be generous.

With around two million tons of phosphate being extracted every year, Nauru was raking in the equivalent in today's dollars of 2.5 billion annually. By 1975, a royalties trust designed to act as insurance against the future had crossed the one billion Australian dollars mark.

What the government didn't save, it was more than happy to spend. And it's here we come to our second tally of expenditure: the completely unreasonable things Nauru blew its money on.

Despite being a nation of only around 10,000 citizens, Nauru owned a fleet of cruise ships and overseas hotels; as well as a loss-making airline that flew all over the Pacific.

Officials blew piles of cash on luxury cars—including an infamous local police chief who imported a Lamborghini, only to realize he was too overweight to fit inside it. Hammer deRoburt, meanwhile, took a limousine to work every day.

And, just in case you'd forgotten, here's a quick reminder that this is all in a country with a single road. One which covers a mere 30 km.

Questionable as these purchases were, though, they've got nothing on the buildings.

During the boom years, the Nauruan government went on a buying spree so wild, it managed to do with real estate what Imelda Marcos once did with shoes.

Expensive hotels in Sydney and Carlton were snapped up, as were properties on Guam, Samoa, and in the Marshall Islands. An office building topped with a revolving restaurant was built in the Northern Marianas for $7m. $400,000 was blown on a floating cocktail lounge.

But the bloated cherry atop this wasteful cake has to be Nauru House in Melbourne.

Standing 50 storeys high, it was built at a cost of $45m. Speaking to the *Times*, President deRoburt proudly claimed of the buildings, airlines, and cruise ships:

> "These are very deliberately promoted operations that we think in the long run will pay."

Yet for all the staggering waste on display so far, perhaps nothing can compare to the West End musical.

Yes, you heard that right. Toward the end of the boom—in the early 1990s—the Nauruan government decided to spend $7m funding a musical about the life of Leonardo DaVinci.

It's at this point that the tale of Nauru can't help but descend into farce.

Written by the former roadie of a British one-hit wonder band—and featuring scenes in which DaVinci slaps the Mona Lisa on the arse to seduce her—the musical got financed after the Nauruan president's advisor played him a demo tape.

Opening in London in 1993, it was the closest real-life equivalent yet staged to *Springtime for Hitler*. The thing became a legendary bomb.

But while Mel Brooks's producers had a canny scheme for making money off a stage failure, the same sadly can't be said for Nauru's government.

Not that those in charge particularly cared.

In 1982, it was officially estimated that—by the time the phosphate ran out—the Nauruan trust fund would be holding more than a billion dollars. Enough to keep every single Nauruan family in comfort for generations.

At least, that was the official version. Unofficially, though, it was clear Nauru's savings weren't all they were claimed to be.

When the *Times* visited the island, they were told by an anonymous official that the government had (quote): "a chronic cash-flow problem". Rumors were already spreading that the money hadn't been invested wisely.

Perhaps the attitude of Nauru's elites is best summed up by a quote from former finance minister James Bop, when the *Times* asked him if he wasn't worried:

> "It is a worry," he said, "but we have a motto in Nauruan (...) It means, 'Tomorrow will take care of itself.'"

Sadly for regular Nauruans, that motto would turn out to be extremely misguided.

<!-- aeo:section end="the-age-of-wonders" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="the-age-of-armageddon" -->
## The Age of Armageddon

One aspect of Nauru's boom that often gets left out of these stories, is that it didn't apply equally to everyone.

While the local elites were importing sports cars, and—in one notable instance—literally using money to wipe their asses, ordinary Nauruans saw very little of the phosphate dollars flowing through their economy.

The average income on the island was between $5,000 and $6,000 a year—or equivalent to just under $20,000 today. Nor were the government handouts enough to buy people off. There's evidence that many regular citizens could see the coming consequences of this wasteful spending, and were desperate to stop it.

The day the Leonardo musical premiered in London, for example, 100 elites were meant to fly out to watch it. But they almost didn't make it when protestors rushed the airport, demanding the government stop pissing their money away.

By this point, Hammer deRoburt was dead. Yet the government had carried on his image: still relying on the income from phosphate to survive.

The trouble was, that phosphate was about to run out.

At the end of the 1980s, Nauru had been exporting 2 million tons a year. By the end of the 1990s, that had dropped to half a million.

Come 2005, it would hit a record low of just 8,000 tons. And while investments in new equipment would soon allow harder-to-reach phosphate to be harvested, post-2005 annual exports would never exceed 45,000 tons.

As the phosphate ran out, so did the money.

With good investments, it's been estimated that Nauru's trust fund could've been worth eight billion Australian dollars by 2004. Instead, wasteful spending, bad investments, and money lost to scams meant the trust fund's true size was under $30 million.

The price of that paltry sum? The total destruction of their homeland.

By the mid-1990s, 80 percent of Nauru had been strip mined. Where there had once been trees and wildlife there was now only a desert of jagged rocks—one on which nothing could ever again be grown or built.

You know that Joni Mitchell song, where she sings about how they paved paradise and put up a parking lot?

Well, at least the "They" in that song got a parking lot out of it. All Nauru got was a failed musical, and an economy based solely on resource extraction.

So, you can probably guess what happened when the resources ran out.

The end of phosphate mining did to Nauruan society what a well-aimed grenade does to the interior of a clown car. Turned what had once been amusing excess into a depressing mess.

With no money, all those free government services collapsed. Not just the transport and healthcare, but also the entire schooling system. Unemployment peaked at 90 percent.

Yet, for all the economic woes of post-boom Nauru, it was the ecological ones that really stood out.

Phosphate mining hadn't just created a desolate wasteland that could never be healed. It had also poisoned the island's waters; and left the interior covered in fine, toxic particles. Particles that get kicked up when the wind blows, and create breathing problems.

With no arable land, and nowhere to forage, it had left the entire population dependent on food imports. Imports that came in the form of highly-processed foods—contributing to the ongoing obesity and diabetes epidemics.

Imagine, for a second, how jarring this must've been. The whiplash that must accompany a switch from "second richest nation on the planet," to "broke guys living in an environmental wasteland".

Not that the government didn't try to find new revenue streams.

At the saner-end of the spectrum, that involved taking Australia to court for its decades of mismanagement prior to independence.

In 1994, Canberra settled the case, agreeing to pay $57m upfront, followed by another $50m over 20 years. The UK and New Zealand each paid an additional $12m for their role as Nauru's joint custodians.

At the less-sane end, though, it involved doing some stuff that would do to Nauru's reputation what phosphate mining had done to the environment.

Utterly destroy it.

<!-- aeo:section end="the-age-of-armageddon" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="no-exit" -->
## No Exit

The term "offshore banking" probably conjures some specific images. Images that mix pleasant stuff like palm trees and white sand beaches, with others of extremely wealthy people laughing as they refuse to give even a penny to the taxman.

In Nauru's case, though, the government's foray into banking didn't just help the rich evade taxes. It also helped some of the nastiest, most-violent people on Earth launder colossal sums of money.

To make their state attractive to financiers, the government didn't require banks to have any physical presence on the island—not even a mailbox. Nor did it require them to keep any records.

As a result, the sort of people interested in banking on Nauru were the exact sort of people who need to hide massive transfers of money from the authorities. The Russian mafia alone is estimated to have laundered over a billion dollars through the island.

The craziest part? Russian mobsters weren't even the island's shadiest customers. That honor probably goes to al-Qaeda, who banked with Nauru in the run-up to 9/11.

Nor was it just banking services Nauru offered these criminals.

By the mid-1990s, officials were openly selling passports. Now, that's something some countries do even in this day and age—Dominica and North Macedonia, for example, will give you citizenship in exchange for large sums of money.

Nauru's government, though, didn't just sell regular passports. According to the *Guardian* it sold diplomatic passports. As in, the documents that provide immunity from prosecution to the holder.

And when a state is selling diplomatic immunity, while also courting al-Qaeda and the Russian mafia…

…well, you can see how that might be just the teeny tiniest bit worrying.

When the backlash eventually hit, it was immense. So immense, that it dwarfed even the millions of dollars a year Nauru was receiving in banking fees.

In 2002, the US declared the country a money laundering state. Sanctions were slapped on it that equaled those placed on Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The pressure was enough to force Nauru to pass anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing laws. But, with no other source of income, enforcing those laws soon left Nauru poorer than ever.

Completely broke, the island nation was forced to watch as creditors repossessed its airplanes, cruise ships, and foreign real estate. Even the 50-storey Nauru House in Melbourne was sold off.

During this bleak period, just about the only way the government had to make money was by offering recognition to unrecognized states.

This included recognizing Russian-backed separatists in places like Abkhazia. In 2003, it also involved taking a massive bribe from China to sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan… only for the government to then take money from Taipei to reestablish relations two years later.

Aside from that, Nauru's only revenue came from hosting an offshore detention center for Australia. An act that saw it receive millions of dollars per year in visa fees to house asylum seekers Canberra refused to process on its home turf.

But while "millions of dollars a year" might sound like a lot, the truth is that none of these activities were able to support the economy.

So, Nauru kept doing what it had always done. It kept right on mining for phosphate.

If you need a handy metaphor for pointless, self-destructive behavior, it's hard to find a better one than this. In 2018, the *Guardian* reported that Nauru was digging up enough phosphate to make $22m.

The problem? The cost of mining it was $27.5m. The government was losing over $5m a year to dig up the last remaining chunks of land that had yet to be strip mined.

Now, that's not to say phosphate will never again play a major role in Nauru's economy.

With the primary reserves of Topside gone, the country is now considering how to mine its secondary reserves. Chunks of phosphate buried so deep or so hard to get that cost-effective extraction has only recently become viable.

These secondary reserves may total as much as 20 million metric tons. Enough, perhaps, to create a mini-boom.

Yet, even if phosphate again lifts Nauru's economy, it's not a sustainable solution to the country's woes. And who knows what ecological damage it might cause to the remaining 20 percent of the island that's still inhabitable?

To give some idea of just how destructive phosphate mining has been, consider this anecdote. Since 1993, the Nauru Rehabilitation Corporation has spent $135m trying to repair land that's been strip mined.

In all that time, it's managed to revive just 10 hectares—part of an area known as Pit 6. That's a mere fraction of the 400 hectares originally planned for rehabilitation. At this rate, it'll take over 1,000 years to reach their target.

This, then, is where we began. With Nauru in poverty, and its citizens trapped on the edges of an environmental nightmare. Clinging on to the last habitable tracts of land, even as their government considers mining further.

By now, you can doubtless see why so many view Nauru's tale as a parable for humanity. A wake-up call for a species that seems determined to keep degrading its planet, even as wildfires multiply and heatwaves bring entire cities to their knees.

However, it's not climate change that we want to end talking about, but another potential ecological catastrophe. A catastrophe that could be the second great environmental disaster Nauru has been at the center of.

One that won't take place on Topside, but at the bottom of the ocean.

<!-- aeo:section end="no-exit" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="first-as-tragedy-then-as-farce" -->
## First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

Were someone to place a deep-sea polymetallic nodule in your hand, chances are you'd be pretty unimpressed.

About the size of a potato, these nodules are basically smooth brown rocks that exist at the bottom of the ocean. Lying on the seabed some 4 km below the surface—what Americans might call either "two and a half miles" or "a whole bunch of football pitches".

But make no mistake. While these nodules may look small and unimpressive on the outside, it's in the same way that Mob appears a scrawny, boring middle schooler from afar.

Deep inside, both contain a spectacular secret. In Mob's case, it's ESP. In the nodules' case, it's the ability to save the world.

The makeup of these nodules, see, is stuff like cobalt, nickel, and manganese. Minerals that just happen to be key to building the batteries that will dominate the green energy revolution.

This is important, because the International Energy Agency predicts a four-fold increase in demand for these minerals by 2040, as humanity struggles to quickly transition off fossil fuels. The problem, is that terrestrial mining may not be able to keep up with demand.

This is where the nodules come in. Found in rich fields on the seabed, they're particularly clustered in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone—a 4.5 million sq km slice of the Pacific.

Unfortunately for the companies that want to harvest them, though, it's not quite as simple as just buying a boat, sailing west from California, and making bare profit.

No. According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the waters outside each nation's exclusive economic zone are places of "common heritage".

If you want to do any industrial work there, you'll need the UN's International Seabed Authority to agree. And, to get that agreement, you must be sponsored by a recognized nation state.

A nation state like, say, a certain tiny Pacific island in desperate need of cash.

As you'll have guessed by now, the state Canada's The Metals Company (or TMC) has teamed up with to harvest these nodules is none other than Nauru.

Well, technically, it's Nauru, plus Kiribati, and Tonga.

But Nauru is especially important, and not just because it was the first nation to come onboard. It was also the nation that fired the starting gun on nodule harvesting.

The first licenses for exploiting these nodules were granted way back in 2011. But the International Seabed Authority dragged its feet on designing regulations to carry out the work—in large part because of worries about environmental damage.

But, the ISA's rules include a loophole. One which states that the body must approve official applications within two years, even in the absence of regulations.

In July of 2021, Nauru went ahead and submitted its application, triggering a 24-month countdown until mining could begin.

Since you're the sort of intelligent, dashing person who reads articles like this; you're already aware that July, 2021 was more than two years ago. So, you might reasonably ask, what happened with Nauru's application?

Well, we're going to leave you hanging, I'm afraid. A little mystery to tantalize you, that we'll answer in the final chapter.

Before we do that, though, we need to grapple with the effects Nauru's application had. Why it sparked a wave of global outrage—from Fiji to France.

The very real worry, that deep sea mining may be this generation's phosphate mining.

In other words, that Nauru may have fired the starting gun on a whole additional environmental apocalypse.

<!-- aeo:section end="first-as-tragedy-then-as-farce" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="the-second-catastrophe" -->
## The Second Catastrophe?

The process of extracting polymetallic nodules from the seabed is relatively straightforward—to explain, if not actually to do.

Using heavy machinery, companies will hoover up a whole lot of seabed, collecting the nodules on ships which will then return them to land for processing.

But while that might sound pretty simple, it obscures a whole host of complex issues. Not least of which is the way this resource extraction might impact the ocean floor.

As the *New York Times* put it:

> "Scientists say that more is known about the surface of the moon than about the floor of the ocean (...) perhaps 90 percent of the species at the bottom of the Pacific remain unclassified."

That means we can't even begin to predict how removing these nodules will disturb marine ecosystems. Even if most scientists are sure that the impacts will be more than negligible.

For example, the machinery is likely to churn up sediment at a spectacular rate, potentially destroying fragile habitats.

Even if it doesn't, there's the chance that toxic metals will be among those sediments churned up. Toxic metals that may be swept upwards in plumes, dragged high into the water to poison marine lifeforms.

Others point to the potential for noise from the machinery to damage the ability of whales to communicate with one another. Something that could lead to massive disruption in their lifecycles.

Mostly, though, people are worried that we're going to just go out and start destroying something we don't really understand. And the long-term effects of that might be horrifying.

As the *New Yorker* reported last year:

> "Hundreds of marine scientists have signed a statement warning that this would be an ecological disaster resulting in damage 'irreversible on multi-generational timescales.'"

One of the slightly-galling things about this, is that this damage won't be happening in Nauru's waters.

Situated between Hawaii and Mexico, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is thousands of kilometers from the barren desert of Topside. An environmental disaster here would affect many different places.

That may be why there's been a concerted push at the UN to place a moratorium on deep sea mining. A push that includes Pacific states like Fiji, Chile, Panama, Palau, Costa Rica and New Zealand; but also Atlantic nations like Ireland, France, and Sweden.

Standing against them, are countries that have already sponsored exploration contracts. Countries like China, South Korea, Russia, Jamaica, Brazil, Japan, and France.

And, yes, France absolutely appeared on both of those lists! Talk about "having your baguette and eating it".

Now, we need to be clear at this point, that the potential impact on the seabed is far from settled science.

The Metals Company—the one Nauru is sponsoring—claims that nodule extraction will be less-damaging than land-based mining. The Seabed Authority, meanwhile, is at pains to stress that work will only be allowed in 60 percent of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. A whole 1.96 million sq km will be preserved as a pristine environment.

Yet it may be the official position of Nauru itself that is the most-interesting of all.

Because, rather than an economic activity, the Nauruan government describes deep sea mining as something far more existential. A way to save the last habitable part of their damaged nation.

With climate change already underway, sea levels are expected to rise in the coming decades.

While this will suck for everyone, it will be especially awful for low-lying island nations. Although Nauru isn't as low-lying as some, the destruction of Topside means the only inhabitable parts are very close to the waves.

According to Nauru's Ambassador to the International Seabed Authority, Margo Deiye, her country is destined to vanish unless the green transition happens extremely soon. And making the world's economy green will require a gigantic increase in certain minerals.

Deep sea mining can help with that. TMC estimates that there are enough nodules down there to power 280 million electric vehicles. 280 million vehicles, that would otherwise be farting out planet-frying gases.

Or, as Margo Deiye has said:

> "The misunderstanding is that any human activity does not have risks – every activity has risks. But the risk of not doing anything with this current climate crisis, is much bigger for us and it's an existential threat for the Pacific."

These, then, are the two sides that stand opposed in this debate. One which believes extracting the seabed's resources could cause a catastrophe; and another that believes a bigger catastrophe is already happening right now, and we have to do everything we can to try and stop it.

As to who is in the right, we can't really say. Unlike George Costanza, we've never claimed to be marine biologists.

But what we can say, is that the stakes are high. And, as we move into the final chapter, it's with a massive question hanging over everything.

What if we don't figure out who's right, until it's already too late?

<!-- aeo:section end="the-second-catastrophe" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="watching-the-world-burn" -->
## Watching the World Burn

When the *New York Times* did a little digging into the contract between TMC and Nauru, what they found didn't exactly paint a flattering picture.

According to their reporting, Nauru would receive a tiny fraction of the profits from deep sea mining. While the exact amount has never been disclosed, the paper did speak to a community leader from the co-sponsoring nation of Tonga, who said his country had been offered $2 a ton.

Were the same fee applied to Nauru, that would mean the island nation stands to receive less than 0.5 percent of all profits TMC makes from deep sea mining.

As former Tonga parliament member Lord Fusitu'a told the paper of record:

> "This company set out to game the system and use a poor, developing Pacific nation as the conduit to exploit these resources."

You may not be surprised to learn that this is a claim TMC vigorously disputes. Nonetheless, such a setup leaves a bad taste in the mouth—reminiscent, as it is, of Nauru's past exploitation.

It also implies that the fight against climate change may be just a convenient fig leaf. A way for Nauru to ensure some much-needed income, in the guise of fighting the good fight.

With Australia's offshore detention centers coming to an end, the island is about to lose one of its few revenue streams.

In such a dire scenario, even a mere half a percent of whatever TMC makes would have a positive impact on the Nauruan economy.

But that's only if the mining ever gets going.

So, remember back when we said Nauru had fired the starting gun on a two-year countdown to resource extraction, back in July of 2021?

Well, despite the loophole that should've allowed TMC to start mining by now, the International Seabed Authority managed to delay the process, giving it more time to finalize regulations.

At time of writing, it's now thought that no resource extraction will take place until early 2025. Later than the 2024 date TMC had initially penciled in, but not remarkably so.

When that date arrives, we'll finally see for certain what the truth is. Whether Nauru is today helping lead the charge toward the green energy revolution that'll save our planet… or simply playing a bit part in yet another tale of human greed and ecological disaster. A new Topside for the 21st Century.

The scary part is, we'll probably only know with hindsight.

While the destruction of Topside—the wrecking of Nauru—was a tale foretold, it was all too easy to overlook the gloomy predictions in the moment.

All too easy for first Arthur F. Ellis, then the Australian colonists, and finally the Nauruan elite to ignore the Cassandras. To quietly tell themselves that, by the time the phosphate ran out, they'd have fixed the problem. That the miracles of money would allow them to escape the consequences of their shortsighted actions.

It's a tale everyone reading this will see some horrible parallels in.

As Antarctic ice levels drop and oceans overheat; as scientists sound warning alarms; how many of our leaders today act like the Nauruan elite of yore? How many shrug and say "tomorrow will take care of itself," even as they ensure that tomorrow will be anything but fine.

And now here we are, with deep sea mining. Potentially standing at the edge of another catastrophe. Another moment when a narrow elite adds up the costs, and decides the benefits to them outweighs the risk to everyone else.

It's reasons like this that explain why Nauru's story resonates so strongly today. The story of how the richest country in the world destroyed itself.

Fittingly, it's a resonance the Nauruans themselves are only too aware of.

Back in 2011, then-president Marcus Stephen wrote a guest column for the *Times*, where he set out the parable of Nauru's self-inflicted apocalypse:

> "I am not looking for sympathy," he wrote, "but rather warning you what can happen when a country runs out of options. The world is headed down a similar path with the relentless burning of coal and oil, which is altering the planet's climate, melting ice caps, making oceans more acidic and edging us ever closer to a day when no one will be able to take clean water, fertile soil or abundant food for granted (...)

> I forgive you if you have never heard of Nauru — but you will not forgive yourselves if you ignore our story."

It's a story that, over 12 years later, is more relevant to our planet's future than it has ever been.

<!-- aeo:section end="watching-the-world-burn" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="key-takeaways" -->
## Key Takeaways

- Nauru's wealth was built on phosphate mining, which destroyed 80% of its land.
- The island's elite squandered its resources, leading to poverty and environmental degradation.
- Nauru's experience serves as a warning about the dangers of unchecked resource exploitation.
- The island is now considering deep-sea mining, raising concerns about environmental impact.
- Nauru's story highlights the risks of prioritizing short-term gains over long-term sustainability.

<!-- aeo:section end="key-takeaways" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="frequently-asked-questions" -->
## Frequently Asked Questions

### What is the current state of Nauru's environment?

Nauru is an ecological nightmare. About 80% of the land is a toxic desert with jagged limestone peaks and fine, irritating dust where nothing can grow. The only habitable part is a 274m-wide zone around the island.

### How did Nauru become so wealthy in the 1980s?

Nauru became wealthy due to the mining of phosphate, a fertilizer that produced spectacular harvests. The island was per capita one of the richest nations on Earth in the early 1980s.

### What caused Nauru's economic downfall?

Nauru's economic downfall was caused by the depletion of its phosphate reserves and the mismanagement of its sovereign wealth fund. The government spent extravagantly and made poor investments, leading to financial ruin.

### What health issues are prevalent among Nauru's population?

Nauru has extreme rates of obesity, diabetes, smoking, and alcoholism. The population also faces high rates of domestic violence and other antisocial behaviors.

### What is the significance of the doorstop found in Sydney in 1899?

The doorstop, mistaken for petrified wood, was actually a chunk of phosphate. Its discovery led to the exploitation of Nauru's phosphate reserves, which ultimately destroyed the island's environment.

### What was the impact of phosphate mining on Nauru's environment?

Phosphate mining turned much of Nauru into a wasteland. It contaminated the groundwater, left the interior covered in toxic particles, and destroyed the island's ability to grow food or support wildlife.

### What role did Australia play in Nauru's history?

Australia annexed Nauru after World War I and oversaw the strip-mining of its phosphate reserves. While Australia paid royalties and set up trust funds, the exploitation was still destructive and left Nauru in a dire state after independence.

### What is Nauru's current economic situation?

Nauru is currently broke and near-uninhabitable. It faces high unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, and relies on highly-processed imported foods. The government has resorted to desperate measures like selling passports and hosting offshore detention centers.

### What is deep sea mining and how is Nauru involved?

Deep sea mining involves extracting polymetallic nodules from the ocean floor, which contain minerals crucial for green energy technologies. Nauru, in partnership with The Metals Company, has submitted an application to start deep sea mining, sparking global controversy.

### What are the potential environmental impacts of deep sea mining?

Deep sea mining could destroy fragile marine habitats, churn up toxic sediments, and disrupt marine life. Scientists warn that the long-term effects could be catastrophic and irreversible.

<!-- aeo:section end="frequently-asked-questions" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="sources" -->
## Sources

- [Original Places video: Nauru: How the Richest Country in the World Destroyed Itself](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow3arhB18xM)
- [https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/dark-history-nauru/](https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/dark-history-nauru/)
- [https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/07/magazine/world-s-richest-little-isle.html](https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/07/magazine/world-s-richest-little-isle.html)
- [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/10/a-short-history-of-nauru-australias-dumping-ground-for-refugees](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/10/a-short-history-of-nauru-australias-dumping-ground-for-refugees)
- [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/04/corruption-incompetence-and-a-musical-naurus-riches-to-rags-tale](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/04/corruption-incompetence-and-a-musical-naurus-riches-to-rags-tale)
- [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/29/world/deep-sea-mining.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/29/world/deep-sea-mining.html)
- [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/08/future-of-deep-sea-mining-hangs-in-balance-as-opposition-grows](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/08/future-of-deep-sea-mining-hangs-in-balance-as-opposition-grows)
- [https://www.smh.com.au/world/oceania/going-broke-and-sinking-nauru-wants-to-mine-the-ocean-floor-20230610-p5dfiy.html](https://www.smh.com.au/world/oceania/going-broke-and-sinking-nauru-wants-to-mine-the-ocean-floor-20230610-p5dfiy.html)
- [https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/7/9/nauru-prepares-to-mine-deep-seas-in-big-climate-controversy](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/7/9/nauru-prepares-to-mine-deep-seas-in-big-climate-controversy)
- [https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/the-secret-history-of-nauru-and-its-lost-wealth/7496620](https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/the-secret-history-of-nauru-and-its-lost-wealth/7496620)
- [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/fertiliser-island-scents-musical-success-first-night-leonardo-1489451.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/fertiliser-island-scents-musical-success-first-night-leonardo-1489451.html)
- [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/03/mining-the-bottom-of-the-sea](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/03/mining-the-bottom-of-the-sea)
- [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/opinion/19stephen.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/opinion/19stephen.html)
- [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/23/us/politics/pacific-seabed-mining-delayed.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/23/us/politics/pacific-seabed-mining-delayed.html)
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## Related Coverage
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