Nauru, a small island nation covering just eight square miles in the southwest Pacific Ocean, is offering citizenship for $105,000 as part of a “golden passport” initiative aimed at funding climate action.
Facing existential threats from rising sea levels, storm surges, and coastal erosion, Nauru lacks the financial resources to protect itself from a crisis largely driven by wealthier nations.
The government hopes that selling citizenship will generate the funds needed to relocate 90% of the island’s approximately 12,500 residents to higher ground and establish a new community.
Golden passports have long been controversial, with past programs around the world exploited for illicit activities. However, as developing nations struggle to secure funding for climate adaptation—an issue compounded by the US withdrawal from global climate commitments—alternative revenue sources have become necessary.
“While the world debates climate action, we must take proactive steps to secure our nation’s future,” Nauru’s President David Adeang told CNN.
The program, which restricts applicants with certain criminal histories, offers a Nauruan passport with visa-free access to 89 countries, including the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates.
Many of these new passport holders are unlikely to visit Nauru, but acquiring citizenship allows them to lead “global lives,” according to Kirstin Surak, an associate professor of political sociology at the London School of Economics and the author of The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires. “This can be particularly useful for those with more restrictive passports,” she told CNN.
For Nauru, the initiative represents an opportunity to secure its future, particularly given its troubled past. Beginning in the early 1900s, the island was heavily mined for phosphate, leaving much of its interior barren and uninhabitable. Today, around 80% of Nauru remains unsuitable for habitation, forcing residents to live along vulnerable coastlines where sea levels are rising faster than the global average.
With phosphate reserves depleted, Nauru has explored various revenue streams. Since the early 2000s, it has operated as an offshore detention site for refugees attempting to reach Australia, a practice that was later scaled back following detainee deaths. More recently, the island has found itself at the center of a contentious plan to mine the deep sea for minerals essential to the green energy transition.
Nauru has also attracted attention for unusual reasons. Disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried once considered purchasing the island to build an apocalypse bunker, as revealed in 2023 legal filings.
For residents, however, the future remains uncertain. “A lot of people residing on the coast have already lost land—some have had their entire houses engulfed by king tides and they have lost everything,” said Tyrone Deiye, a Nauruan national and researcher at Monash Business School in Australia.
Selling citizenship has the potential to make “an absolutely enormous” economic impact for micro-states like Nauru, according to Surak.
The government expects to generate around $5.6 million in the program’s first year, eventually scaling to approximately $42 million annually. The initiative will expand gradually to monitor for any unintended consequences, explained Edward Clark, CEO of the Nauru Economic and Climate Resilience Citizenship Program. The ultimate goal is for the program to account for 19% of total government revenue.
The program’s success will depend on how funds are allocated. “Revenues must be channeled into the country, and what they are used for matters,” Surak emphasized. She added that transparency will be key in ensuring that citizenships are not granted to individuals willing to pay bribes.
Nauru has prior experience with citizenship sales, though its previous attempt in the mid-1990s was marred by scandal. In 2003, two suspected Al Qaeda terrorists carrying Nauruan passports were arrested in Malaysia.
To prevent similar issues, the government insists the new program will have rigorous vetting procedures, barring applicants from UN-designated high-risk nations, such as Russia and North Korea. The initiative will also involve partnerships with international organizations, including the World Bank, to provide oversight.
Nauru is not the only country leveraging citizenship sales to fund climate resilience. Dominica, a Caribbean nation that has sold citizenship since 1993, recently announced it was using the proceeds to support its goal of becoming “the world’s first climate resilient country by 2030.”
As climate change costs continue to outpace the financial resources of vulnerable nations, selling citizenship may become an increasingly attractive option. “Nauru highlights the opportunities for climate-vulnerable countries to become testing grounds for climate innovation,” Clark said.
(CNN)
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