The Dystopian Paradise of the Pacific:- Nauru, the metaphor for our times?

“I wish we’d never discovered that phosphate. I wish Nauru could be like it was before. When I was a boy, it was so beautiful. There were trees. It was green everywhere, and we could eat the fresh coconuts and breadfruit. Now I see what has happened here, and I want to cry.”

-Late Pastor of the Nauru Congregational Church

The island nation of Nauru in the Pacific can as well be said to be located in the middle of nowhere; Lying four thousand kilometers from Australia and more than nine thousand from North America the island is as far away as humanly imaginable. It is officially the third smallest on Earth (after Vatican City and Monaco). And yet the tiny island could as well be a metaphor for the world as we know it today. Having some of the highest unemployment rates in the world and officially the highest obesity rate in the world (61 % of all living citizens) the country lies as a barren rock in the Pacific with most of its landmass officially uninhabitable due to excessive mining of Phosphate - the major ingredient behind the manufacture of fertilizers.

In the 1970's phosphate mining which had begun before Nauru gained independence from its colonizers Australia, Britain, and Newzealand under a "Joint UN Trusteeship" made Nauru one of the richest countries on Earth. Nauru's Great Limestone Pinnacles which contained lavish amounts of Phosphate became its prime export and earned the country almost $1.7 billion dollars at the time, the average of $27000 for every citizen making it one of the richest countries on Earth back at the time. Nauru essentially became a welfare state for its citizens with free Education and Healthcare and home to possibly some of the largest numbers of Sports Cars back at the time.

The country's glory was short-lived. Years of indiscriminate mining by colonizers and Nauruans themselves accompanied by a complete short-sightedness regarding the potential consequences of the possible exhaustion of Phosphate Supply ravaged the country physically and economically. It was estimated that in less than a generation or two the phosphate reserves would run out.

The country was left with two excruciating choices. Continue exporting and risk the collapse of the country or develop a plan to move away from phosphate and build an alternative economy. In the end, the country stuck to the former and struggled to adopt the latter. By 2004, 90% of the population was officially unemployed, per capita income was amongst the lowest in the world ($6000 per annum) and most of the island was unfit for habitation due to excessive mining. Nauru's lush and pristine forests which covered most of the tiny island were reduced to a barren wasteland. Rocks, stones, and gravel covered most of the land which was periodically dumped by now dysfunctional mines.

Within every country or society's story lies a larger one that strikes at the very heart of human civilization as we know it. This provides powerful yet provocative clues on what societies need to do to survive or for that matter flourish. In the case of Nauru, the country chose a direction from which there was a point of no return. It could have been different but it did not come to be so.

For a brief while, Nauru did try confronting some of its demons. Nauru sought compensation from Australia, New Zealand, and Britain for the damage done by mining before July 1967. And yet after independence, Australia was unwilling to consider compensating Nauru and, after decades of delays and indifference, in 1989 Nauru took Australia to the International Court of Justice. Australia agreed to pay A$57 million in 1994 as well as another A$50 million over the next 20 years (later, the U.K. and New Zealand each contributed A$12 million to reduce Australia’s burden). But by then the damage was already done and there was just more to come.

On the other hand, most of the country's attempts at diversification were disastrous leading to irreversible financial and economic losses that bankrupted the country. Many of these were often due to corruption and mismanagement by government authorities who had previously controlled most of the nation's previously thriving phosphate mines. For a brief while, Nauru became an Off-Shore Banking Center for Financial Transactions many of which were shadowy and greatly compromised the country's sovereignty. The country's sovereign wealth fund became a piggy bank for local politicians as expensive hotels, concert halls, and real estate were bought by political elites. Some of the investments were just ill-placed such as funding Hotels, Restaurants, and Casinos abroad. By the end of it, the country was in debt, fiscally bankrupt, and in economic ruin. But probably the most devastating impact was that of the mining itself which made most of Nauru uninhabitable.

Today Nauru is famous only for one thing; a detention center established by Australia on the island to process asylum seekers who’d been trying to reach Australia by boat. By 2002, some 1,000 asylum seekers — mostly Afghan and Iraqi — had been ferried to Nauru, and for a few years, Australian aid and processing fees added millions to Nauruan government coffers. While phosphate reserves are exhausted the detention center along with foreign aid by Australia and the United States. Concerns have been expressed in the past that the establishment of the detention center and increasing foreign aid has made Nauru a client state in the hands of Australia, although many state that the condition of the country is so precarious, that this may possibly be its only source of revenue.

At first, the island state of Nauru may seem insignificant in the larger scheme of world affairs. At the same time, it becomes a metaphor for our world and the times we live in. A society affected by its past and ruined through its consistent political, social, and environmental failures becomes a canvas by which the future of our entire world can be examined. A society's failures, in turn, become representative of greed, myopia, financial and economic irresponsibility, and indifference that dooms societies and what is dearest to them