This Island, here, is a giant pile of . No...no...
I don't mean to offend anyone, I'm rather stating the fact.
Moreover, this island nation was considered the wealthiest nation on earth only a few
decades ago.... by 2017, it has become one of the poorest countries, where no one wants
to live, not even refugees.
The story of how this place went from rags to riches and back to rags again, is not only
interesting but give some important lessons too.
With only 21 square kilometers of land area - somewhat the size of LA international airport,
Nauru is the smallest state in South Pacific and third smallest state in the world after
Vatican City and Monaco.
It's a home to some 11,000 people but long before humans discovered the island, local
bird species used this island as their restroom and excreted their poop here for millions
of years.
The bird droppings, also called guano, eventually formed rich phosphate deposits that covered
most of the Island area.
For those who don't know, Phosphates are the key ingredient in agricultural fertilizers
and its limited deposits are mined all around the world.
So, basically, Nauru was sitting on top of excrement gold and Germans were the first
to find out.
They started mining in this resource in 1906 under the name of "Pacific Phosphate Company".
Following the world war 1, mining continued under the "British Phosphate Commission" when
Nauru fell in the hands of Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.
Things remained more or less the same until world war 2 and this is where the things started
to change.
Nauru got independence in 1968, bought the "British Phosphate Commission" and instead
of fixing the damage done, it went on a full-on crazy mining streak under the locally owned
"Nauru Phosphate Corporation".
The people of Nauru mined A LOT, so much so that Nauru became one of the richest countries
in mere a decade.
The extent of rapacious mining can be understood by this dystopian looking hellscape of jagged
limestone pinnacle up to 15 meters high that formed when the phosphate was carved out of
the ground.
To load phosphate on ships for export, Nauru built these gigantic iron structures on its
shores which now lie useless.
In 1975, the country earned the equivalent of $2.5 billion for a population of mere 7000
- more than enough to keep them satisfied for generations to come.
Per capita income of Nauru reached second highest in the world, only after the oil-heaven
Kuwait.
So what did Nauruans do with so much money?
Did they made some long-term investments that would allow them to sustain their future lives
on this tiny, barren and desolate Island after resources are gone?
NOPE.
They had better ideas.
With their newfound wealth, people in Nauru bought cars and houses; the country built
a hotel, a golf course and founded an airline so it could import Western food.
The government of Nauru created a Nauru trust to reinvest the spare wealth but mismanagement,
corruption, and ignorance resulted in bad investments in vanity projects around the
globe - Nauru house in Melbourne, Nauru tower in Hawaii, Pacific Star hotel in Guam, Pacific
house in Washington, The grand pacific hotel in Fiji, 3 Chesham Street in London to name
a few.
Officials were spending money on luxury trips in the name of managing the real-estate portfolio.
At some point, Nauru got the nickname of "Kuwait of the Pacific" because of how citizens and
government officials flaunted money as if it was endless.
Time took a turn, Island's phosphate resources depleted but countries expenditure remained
the same, Nauru started borrowing money from other countries.
One of the advisers convinced the president to invest in a London based musical pop band
named Unit 4+2.
The show closed only a few weeks after its debut costing Nauruans more than 7 million
dollars in today's money.
With no source of income to pay off its debts, international creditors seized Nauru's entire
real estate portfolio together with its sole aircraft of Air Nauru.
Nauru trust went bankrupt, virtually bankrupting entire nation.
All Nauru was left with was overexploited barren lands where nothing could be grown,
polluted shores where no aquatic animal would come and a population of some 7,000 people
to feed.
The story doesn't end here.
It just gets a bit crazier.
As a desperate attempt to generate income, Nauru published ads on the internet offering
anyone with $20,000 the opportunity to open a bank on the island.
Russian mafia saw an opportunity to seize and used Nauru’s liberal banking policies
to launder over $70 billion from the former Soviet Union.
At one point, Nauru used its position as a member of the United Nations to recognize
independent countries like Kosovo and Abkhazia allegedly for money.
Russia was reported to give Nauru US$50 million in humanitarian aid for this act.
Nauru Government, however, claimed that these two things were not linked.
In 2001, Nauru became a refugee detention center when the Australian government agreed
to pay Nauru for temporarily housing refugees that were reaching Australia for Asylum.
Hundreds of men, women, and children were sent to these offshore processing centers
where, it was later reported that conditions were wretched, akin to torture and refugees
were treated like criminals.
Some compared the conditions in these camps to those at Guantanamo Bay.
The Nauru camp shut down in 2008 and reopened again in 2012 with minor additions but the
conditions did not improve.
This time the Australian and Nauruan governments tried to keep things secret by limiting access
to the Island and punishing those who would speak about the conditions inside the camps.
An Iranian refugee, in 2016, lit himself on fire after he learned that he would be expected
to live on the island for the next ten years.
Talking about today's Nauru, 70% of the Island is now uninhabitable.
In absence of farming, people are forced to consume only low-quality imported food in
cans which have greatly contributed to the decline of the health of the island.
On the BMI index, Nauruans are the most overweight people in the world with 97 percent of men
and 93 percent of women being overweight or obese.
Nauru has the world's highest level of type 2 diabetes, with more than 40 percent of the
population affected.
Kidney and heart-related diseases are common on the island.
90% of Nauruans are unemployed living on government support, the school system has almost collapsed
and detention centers are still operating.
It demonstrates how unsustainable exploitation of resources out of greed can put us in situations
we may never come out of.