Driving Directions Nauru
NAURU is the smallest of the states in Oceania and one of the world’s smallest republics, occupying just over 21 square kilometers or 8 square miles in the central Pacific.
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Formerly called Pleasant Island, it is a coral island with a population of around 11,000. The majority of the population lives along a narrow coastal belt of fertile land where the main crops are pineapples, bananas, and coconuts. The climate is tropical with high and irregular rainfall.
The country is rich due entirely to high-quality phosphate rock deposits in the central plateau, which is sold for fertilizer to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea.
Phosphate deposits are likely exhausted shortly, but the government is investing overseas and attempting to diversify to ensure the country’s economic future.
Since around 80 percent of the land will be uninhabitable once the mines are exhausted, considerable rehabilitation will be required.
Google maps™ Nauru
A coastal plain at the perimeter of the island gradually rises to a fertile section no wider than 275 meters (902 feet). A coral cliff rises from this belt to a central plateau.
Nauru is located in the west-central Pacific Ocean. The island is surrounded by a coral reef exposed at low tide and dotted with pinnacles. The reef is bounded seaward by deep water.
Did you know about Nauru?
Nauru and the other fifteen low-lying countries of the Pacific Islands Forum face the environmental crisis of rising sea levels due to global warming. The consequences of climate change include the destruction of freshwater sources, more intense storms, loss of crops to seawater, and coastal erosion.
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