Welcome to Nauru, The Most Corrupt Country You’ve Never Heard Of
The island that got rich off bird sh*t is now a total train wreck.
Nestled amongst a cluster of islands in the Central Pacific is Nauru, a small country with an insane story. In 1980, Nauru was considered the wealthiest nation on the planet; in 2017, BusinessTech listed it as one of the five poorest countries in the world.
This is a story of a country that journeyed from rags to riches and back to rags. It’s a cautionary tale of what happens when a nation exploits its natural resources at the expense of people’s lives.
Making billions off bird poop
One thousand and four hundred miles off the coast of Fiji you’ll find Nauru — a tiny coral island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Clocking in at just eight square miles, Nauru’s landmass is only slightly larger than Los Angeles International Airport. Unlike LAX, however, Nauru is blissfully uncrowded — its population is just over 10,000.
But before humans discovered the island, it had another purpose: bird bathroom. For 4 million years, the local seagull population used Nauru as a glorified rest stop. As the years went on, the guano calcified, leaving the land rich with phosphates, which companies use to produce fertilizer…
