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Nauru is a single island country situated in the middle of the vast Pacific ocean, about 60 km south of the equator, at latitude 0°31’S and longitude 166° 55’E. Its nearest neighbour is Banaba also known as Ocean Island in the Republic of Kiribati, about 300 km to the east. Sydney is about 4000 km to the south, Tokyo, some 4800 km to the north west and Honolulu about 4200 km to the north east. Nauru is an ancient submerged volcano with a karstified limestone cap of coral origin about 550m thick (Hill and Jacobson 1989), measuring 6 km long by 4 km wide with a circumference of 18 km and a total land area of 21 km2. The central plateau forms about 80% of the island with the highest point to 70 m above sea level. The remaining land area is composed of a flat coastal terrace measuring 300 1000 m wide and with a mean elevation of about 3m above sea level. The shallow intertidal fringing reef measures 110-320 m in width, and sloping 45° angle to the ocean floor to a 4000 m depth. Dalzell & Debao (1994) estimated that the total intertidal reef area down to the 200 m isobaths measures 7.4 km2.

Nauru is a single Island state with a land area of 21 Km square and a population of approximately 11,300. It is one of the world's smallest Republics and was Nauru part of the German territories from 1886 to 1914. It was then mandated by the League of Nations to Australia, New Zealand and United Kingdom. Nauru was administered by these three powers through the Trusteeship system of the United Nations after 1945 until it was granted full independence on the 31 January 1968. Nauru was one of the richest nations in the world on a per capita basis, when its export of phosphate rock, the sole and only export, was at its peak. Trouble for its fragile economy began when world price of phosphate began to fall in about 1988. The economic decline sharpened in the late 1980s and early 1990s but Nauru failed to, or did not want to, take the necessary steps of reducing expenditures commensurate to the fall in revenue by both the Nauru Phosphate Corporation (NPC) and the Government. As a consequence, Nauru began eating into its reserve funds that were held with Nauru Phosphate Royalties Trust (NPRT) and drawing on its savings with Bank of Nauru (BON). Moreover, these economic difficulties have been compounded through the apparent gross mismanagement of investment funds with NPRT and corrupt practices elsewhere.

The Republic of Nauru is a single raised limestone island or makatea with a total area of only 22 km2 (Figure 1), but with jurisdiction over 320,000 km2 of ocean surrounding the island under the United Nations Law of the Sea convention. The island consists mainly of a flat plateau that descends to a narrow coastal fringe where most of the population dwell. The plateau interior contains extensive deposits of phosphate bearing rock which have been mined since the beginning of the twentieth century. There are no rivers or streams on the island but there is a small lake in Buada district at the south west corner of the plateau, known as Buada Lagoon.