The Republic of Nauru is a small island nation, but once as rich as the Middle Eastern countries thanks to bird droppings. This huge reserve of phosphate helps people here enjoy a comfortable and leisurely life, even using money to make toilet paper.
The Republic of Nauru is an island nation in Micronesia in the South Pacific Ocean. With approximately 12,000 inhabitants living on an area of 21 square kilometers, Nauru is the smallest country in the South Pacific Ocean, and the third smallest in the world by area. 
However, the island nation was once rich enough to rival Saudi Arabia thanks to its abundant phosphate deposits made up of bird droppings. Bird droppings accumulated centuries ago on this island. Phosphate is an important ingredient in fertilizer production. 
The huge reserves of phosphate on the island of Nauru are the result of bird droppings (guano) over several thousand years. Because phosphates are located close to the ground, humans can separate them easily. 
Nauru’s economy peaked in 1975 thanks to revenue from phosphate mining, when the island’s GDP per capita was estimated at $50,000, ranking 2nd in the world. 
Nauru’s economy boomed, people lived better without having to fish or cultivate or gather. Western lifestyle is also spreading here, making the locals more and more lazy and like fast food. 
With a huge amount of money from mining, Nauru built an airport, even bought 7 planes to serve traffic and tourism. “Not many people care about whether the investment is profitable or not. Dollars are even used as toilet paper. Life was like an everyday party,” recalls an unnamed former president of Nauru. 
As resources dried up and investors withdrew, Nauru was left with heavy environmental pollution and no main source of income. The fishing and agricultural sectors have been abandoned and polluted, while the people are too used to a life of enjoyment. 
To get the phosphates, workers had to peel off all the topsoil and separate the phosphates from the ancient coral columns. So, after the phosphate disappeared, only tall coral reefs and depressions between them were visible—a type of terrain where humans could not live or plant trees. 
The value of the investment fund managing the island’s resources also decreased. The fund also made many misguided investments in Air Nauru and overseas hotels. These investments never yield returns and even stifle the domestic economy. 
In Nauru, visitors will have nothing to visit because this island has only 30 km of roads, no museums, cultural heritage, hotels or even rivers and mountains to explore. Every year, only about 200 visitors come to Nauru and they are mainly social activists or scientific researchers. 
From a rich country, using dollars to make toilet paper, Nauru fell to a poor island nation with a GDP of only about 102 million USD, the second lowest in the world after Tuvalu. About 90% of Nauruans are unemployed and corruption and money laundering are rampant. 
The people of Nauru instead of finding their way to economic development, they leave their fate to international aid as well as look for cheap imported food sources, which contain a lot of fat and sugar such as low nutrition, from Australia or New Zealand. Please watch the video: Beautiful natural scenery in the least populous countries in the world
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