World’s Richest Island Mined Into Oblivion: Inside Nauru’s $50K-a-Head Boom and Brutal Bust (Video)

As the third smallest country in the world – with Vatican City and Monaco being the only others that are technically lesser in size – Nauru Island once had big money.

The coral island in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, part of Micronesia, was once rich with phosphate deposits, which in turn, made the country very, very rich. But matter is neither created or destroyed, and thus, the precious natural resources eventually dried up.

For a deep dive into the remote island of Nauru, and its history going from one of the richest countries in the world to a landmass mined into oblivion, see below.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cOKcbtfbx2w

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:

“The government of independent Nauru gained control of phosphate operations in 1970, and in the 1980s Nauru was for a time one of the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of gross domestic product per capita. Landowners received royalties from the phosphate earnings, and many Nauruans were unemployed by choice.”

They were so rich that people simply lived off royalties from the mining operations on their land. But the island is small, as mentioned before, meaning that those mining operations could only last so long. And like all good things the dream didn’t last forever.

At its peak, Nauru generated $70-to-85 million annually from its phosphate deposits. It enjoyed an estimated GDP per capita of $50,000 – that’s on par with modern-day France, New Zealand, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, and other, much larger counterparts.

Then, the phosphate dried up.

Britannica continues:

“By the late 20th century, however, the phosphate deposits were quickly becoming exhausted, and Nauru experienced a severe drop-off in earnings, leading to the country’s near bankruptcy by the early years of the 21st century. Nauru struggled to develop other resources and find alternative sources of income.”

And now, after all the mining, “the landscape [has] a forbidding, otherworldly appearance.”

Boom or bust, as they say.