Riches to rags, the story of Nauru
By Mushfiqur Rahman Saad
Nauru is an island country in Micronesia. Unknown to a lot of people it used to be one of the richest countries in the world in terms of per capita income between the 1960s and 1970s. What is fascinating about this island is how quickly things took a total turn and Nauru become of one of the most impoverished and obese countries in the world in a span of a few decades. In this short note we will briefly look at how bad future planning and lack of good leadership and governance turned this beautiful island into a disastrous example of unplanned exploitation.
Nauru became the world’s smallest independent republic in 1968. Due to special geographical advantages Nauru had one of the biggest phosphate mines in the world, which was previously exploited by big colonial powers. Following it’s independence, state owned Nauru Phosphate Corporation took over all phosphate mining operations and assets from British Phosphate Commissioners. Phosphate is a commonly used compound in fertilizers and is key to global food production. With incredible ease of access in mining the phosphate mines in Nauru large scale exploitation of these resources took place making the inhabitants of this small island very rich very fast. Rapid mass scale phosphate mining was so harmful for the environment that Nauru had to resort to the International Court of Justice to complain about the harmful effects Australian mining operations had on their environment. The Nauru government was paid in multiple phases by various parties for damages in terms of fines/penalties. But all was not well, phosphate was a finite resource and with no proper recycling, by the turn of the century the mines were exhausted.
In scarcity of their most valuable resource the very rich inhabitants of Nauru started importing all of their food products from neighboring states, which was usually canned foods high in preservatives and chemicals. With no other resort the Nauru government tried to improve their economical situation by making Nauru a tax haven. This move eventually failed too due to large scale mismanagement and corruption within the Nauru government. This was followed by international bans by major countries like the United States who banned any dollar transactions in Nauru. There was no way out. A country which boasted the highest per capita income in the world was now crippling with an imploding economy and needed a bail out. Australia largely came to the rescue but at a heavy cost known as the ‘Pacific Solution’ in 2001.
The ‘Pacific Solution’ basically was a way by which Australia could send a few hundred Sri-Lankan and Pakistani refugees who came into Australia by boat to detention centers in Nauru. In return Australia agreed to bail Nauru out of it’s economic situation and help the small island-state financially. Things at this point just continued to get worse. Multiple claims were made that the Nauru refugee detention camps had some of the most unbelievable human rights violations. Due to heavily restricted access a lot of the violations could not even be well documented.The number of refugees redirected to this offshore detention center kept rising, and things got so worse that in 2007 a lack of drinking water supply in the island forced the detention centers to close down. The detention centers opened back up in 2012 again with no real improvements on the conditions inside.
Nauru can be considered a textbook example of where unplanned management of natural finite resources can lead us. Yes, we might not have the exact situation as Nauru right now but parallels can be drawn. A lot of countries due to global exploitation of resources have economically and politically broken down; so the question as to how we responsibly look after these resources poses a critical challenge to globalization.
