James Vincent describes the impact of strip-mining for phosphate on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru (LRB, 14 August). In the late 1980s, as Vincent notes, Nauru briefly became the richest country per capita in the world. Severe obesity developed, and with it one of the world’s highest rates of type 2 diabetes. Successive damming of the river to provide water for the cities of Tuscon and Phoenix reduced flow in the Gila by nearly 90 per cent and traditional Akimel O’odham food production came to an end. Alas, much of the modern world has now caught up, and type 2 diabetes in young people has become commonplace.