https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nauru#Modern-day_Na...
>As its phosphate stores began to run out (by 2006, its reserves were exhausted), the island was reduced to an environmental wasteland. Nauru appealed to the International Court of Justice to compensate for the damage from almost a century of phosphate strip-mining by foreign companies. In 1993, Australia offered Nauru an out-of-court settlement of A$2.5 million annually for 20 years. New Zealand and the UK additionally agreed to pay a one-time settlement of $12 million each. Declining phosphate prices, the high cost of maintaining an international airline, and the government's financial mismanagement combined to make the economy collapse in the late 1990s. By the new millennium, Nauru was virtually bankrupt.
When an economy is optimized for resource extraction and export, all sorts of basic social and infrastructure needs are neglected because it's more profitable for the colonizing power. I'm not sure if you were looking for a direct "phosphate mining = obesity" connection but given every example of colonialism that comes to mind, it's not really that much of a stretch.
And with regard to those fines, it sounds like they took control of mining in 1967, almost 40 years before the supplies ran dry. Given that amount of time, and that they had the resources to a) levy no taxes on their citizens and b) provide a UBI, I think that's enough time to at least share in the responsibility for whatever situation they currently find themselves in.
