Property
Fractional customary ownership and land destroyed by phosphate mining
Land is customary and cannot be sold to non-Nauruans. Ownership is fragmented into fractional shares among many family members, determined by the Nauru Lands Committee, and much of the interior is mined-out wasteland.
Key rules
- Deadline — Determinations of the Nauru Lands Committee may be appealed to the Supreme Court within 21 days
- Deadline — Leases to non-Nauruans require government involvement and are of limited term
Governing law
- Lands Act 1976 (s. 3)
- Nauru Lands Committee Act 1956
- Nauru Rehabilitation Corporation Act 1997
- Phosphate Lands (Rehabilitation) provisions
In practice
Nauruan land tenure is unusual in that customary ownership is individual but fractional: a single portion may be owned in undivided shares by dozens of people through generations of inheritance, so obtaining consent to any dealing can be practically impossible. The Nauru Lands Committee determines ownership and succession, with appeal to the Supreme Court. Non-Nauruans cannot own land at all. Overlaying this is environmental devastation — strip mining of phosphate left roughly 80% of the island as pinnacled limestone unfit for habitation or agriculture. Nauru sued Australia in the International Court of Justice over rehabilitation, settling in 1993, and the Rehabilitation Corporation continues work intended to make the interior habitable.