Aust agrees

to pay

FOR the remote inhabitants of Nauru, phosphate rock derived from thousands of years of bird droppings has brought a mixture of misery and wealth. Australia played a leading role in exploiting the resource which was used to fertilise millions of acres of Australian top soil but last month it faced up to a moral responsibility to help pay to rehabilite the environmentally devastated island.

An SAIO7 million compensation package from Canberra brings to an end a long battle by the Nauruans which included an action in the International Court of

Justice (ICJ).

The indigenous people of the 21 square kilometre island, which is only 41km south of the equator, had little contact with Europeans until the 1830 s. Germany formally annexed the island as a protector ate in 1888 and by the early 1900 s phosphate was being mined under a mixture of British and German staff. More than 11,000 tonnes of Nauruan phosphate had been exported to Australia by the end of 1907. Australia stationed troops on the island after the first world war, and together with Britain and New Zealand under a league of nations mandate, con

tinued phosphate mining.

The company paid a royalty of a half penny per ton of phosphate exported to Nauruans with land claims to the area being mined, but there was no written agreement. While royalty rates rose over future years, there is no doubt that the colonisers benefited from cheap stock for producing fertilisers. The Nauruans suf fered heavily under the Japanese, who occupied the island during WWII. Hun dreds died miserably when forced to relocate on atolls further north in Micro

nesia.

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