Page "History of Nauru" Paragraph 21

As its phosphate stores began to run out ( by 2006, its reserves were exhausted ), the island was reduced to an environmental wasteland.

Nauru appealed to the International Court of Justice to compensate for the damage from almost a century of phosphate strip-mining by foreign companies.

In 1993, Australia offered Nauru an out-of-court settlement of 2. 5 million Australian dollars annually for 20 years.

New Zealand and the UK additionally agreed to pay a one-time settlement of $ 12 million each.

Declining phosphate prices, the high cost of maintaining an international airline, and the government's financial mismanagement combined to make the economy collapse in the late 1990s.

By the new millennium, Nauru was virtually bankrupt.