Nauru - 'Island of the Damned'

I subscribe to a magazine called the Sun, which is based out of North Carolina. The July issue had an essay about the Pacific island of Nauru, which is titled 'Island of the Damned', written by Jack Hitt. This article starts with four paragraphs of descriptions of the formation of the Pacific from Michener's novel 'Hawaii', and then goes on to talk about the slow destruction of the island of Nauru - mostly from years of phosphate mining.

It can be tough reading, as the image portrayed in this article is about as different as one can get from the view of the South Pacific islands as a tropical paradise.

The Sun has placed the first half of this article on-line as a pdf file, and I do consider it to be very worhwhile reading, as it gives a view of the hardships that many of the Pacific islands are facing. It is a sad story, of how greed can ruin a nation and a island.

http://www.thesunmagazine.org/367_Hitt.pdf#search=%22%22Called%20Nauru%2C%20the%20island%20is%20one%20of%20those%20tiny%20nations%22%22

Because there are three pages from the essay on the web, I have chosen to add one paragraph from those final 3 pages. I do highly recommend that you read the essay portion in the above link, to give you the proper background and setting for what is described in the following paragraph. I also recommend that you do a search on Tiki Central for 'Nauru' so you can read the 3 previous references to Nairu on this forum.
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" There are no words or pictures that can adequetely capture what mining has wrought in Nairu. The small atoll has essentially been tonsured. The sickly collection of water-starved vegetation on the periphery - the dead palms, the pandanus tress with black crowns, the greenless golf course - is the good news. It masks the horror that lies just inside that ring of scrub: The entire interior has been clear-cut, and the underbed of phosphate strip-mined so deep that the only things left are the coral bones of the atoll as it might have existed a million years ago. With all the topsoil and phosphate gone, whats left are sinuous canals marked by sun-bleached limestone towers and coral outcroppings. One would be hard-pressed to find a place that has been more wasted by the global economy. The winding, dug-out channels among these coral spires are lined with an appallingly silky dirt. Old trash blows around this blistering desert, the shredded plastic bags snagging on bits of coral, the weightier garbage eventually sinking into the ruts, where the rot manages to to service the root systems of a few brave weeds. If there is a speck of nutrient to be found there, it is hunted by feral dogs that long ago fled the domestictaed life on the shore for a brutal, dystopian existence in the coral channels. "

On can also read the Wikipedia entry for Nairu, for more information on the island - including several images showing the destruction of the island.

Vern

There's a great radio story on Nauru on NPR's "This American Life". The show is called "The Middle of Nowhere". If you go to this link and put "Nauru" in the Search box, you should be able to find it ok.

http://www.thislife.org/

Sabu

Facinating to listen to and see! This is also a must watch: http://www.algalita.org/pelagic_plastic_mov.html

The author of the Sun Magazine 'Island of the Damned' article is the same person who reports on and narrates the 'Middle of Nowhere' piece on 'This American Life'. Jack Hitt is the one man who has probably done more to raise the awareness of Nauru than anybody else.

Vern

I never heard of this nation prior to the 2012 Olympics, and what a horrific, yet thought provoking warning its president issued:

Phosphate mining—first by European companies in the early 1900s and later our own—cleared the lush tropical rainforest that once covered our island’s interior, scarring the land and leaving only a thin strip of coastline for the island’s 10,000 people to live on. The legacy of exploitation left us with few economic alternatives and one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, nearly 90 percent.

I am not looking for sympathy, but rather warning you what can happen when a country runs out of options. The world is headed down a similar path with the relentless burning of coal and oil, which is altering the planet’s climate, melting ice caps, making oceans more acidic, and edging us ever closer to a day when no one will be able to take clean water, fertile soil, or abundant food for granted.