Countries

Nauru

A speck of coral on the equator, twenty one square kilometres and twelve thousand people: seabirds turned it into a mountain of phosphate, the phosphate briefly made it among the richest places per person anywhere, and then it ran out.

Coral pools and palms on the Nauru coast at dusk, with a faint rainbow over the Pacific

Coral pools, Nauru coast

Photo: Hadi Zaher, CC BY 2.0

Blue is the Pacific, the gold band is the equator, and the white star just below it (and west of the date line) marks where the island sits. Its twelve points are Nauru's twelve original tribes; white stands for the phosphate that made it rich.

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