Could Nauru recover from the environmental degradation caused by strip mining?
In the 1970s and the 1980s, Nauru was, in fact, one of the world's wealthiest countries in terms of per capita income. The reason? Its vast phosphate deposits.For several decades, the phosphate industry allowed Nauruans to access all essential services and maintain a high standard of living. Many landowners didn't even need to work because they received royalties from phosphate earnings.
The accumulation of bird droppings, or guano, is rich in phosphates and other nutrients, such as potassium and nitrogen, that are essential for plant growth. That is why guano is primarily used in fertilizers, and in fact, Nauru's guano was used to fertilize pastures in Australia and New Zealand for a long time.
By the 1960s, around 80% of the island's surface had been mined, leaving a wasteland of jagged limestone and no fertile land. Only the coastal strip around the island was inhabitable. At one point, the government of Australia offered to relocate the entire population to an island off the coast of Queensland, but the Nauruans had opted for independence instead.
But it failed to invest in other areas that could provide national revenue for the day when Nauru ran out of phosphate reserves —something that was very likely to happen if we take into account that Nauru's phosphate deposits had already been strip-mined for several decades at this point.Phosphate mining can be conducted either in strip mining or underground mining, depending on the location and type of deposit.
The Lavender Pit is a former open pit copper mine in Arizona which shows the effects of strip mining on the soil.Both strip and underground phosphate mining can have significant impacts on the environment, but phosphate rock is most commonly strip mined, as the process is cheaper, and most phosphate deposits are found near the surface anyway.
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