YAREN, Nauru — Nauru’s citizenship-by-investment program says global instability is driving increased interest from wealthy families in its climate-linked second passport, pointing to new industry research showing family offices worldwide are repositioning for a wider range of future risks.
Edward Clark, chief executive officer of the Naoero Economic and Climate Resilience Citizenship Program, said in a release Wednesday that the 2026 UBS Global Family Office Report, based on 307 family offices across more than 30 markets, found 60 percent plan to change their strategic asset allocation over the next 12 months.
“The current global instability continues to bring increased enquiries from families wanting to protect against government decisions, compulsory conscription and other factors that could challenge their future,” Clark said. “The Naoero citizenship option offers families a way to diversify geographically, while contributing to a nation working to build greater economic and climate resilience.”
Nauru launched the program at the COP29 climate conference in November 2024 and opened applications in January 2025, becoming the first Pacific island state to explicitly tie a citizenship-by-investment scheme to climate adaptation financing. Applicants make a non-refundable contribution to Nauru’s Treasury Fund, with fees starting at $105,000 for a single applicant at launch and discounted pricing currently advertised through the end of this year. The government has said proceeds support coastal protection, renewable energy, water security and its Higher Ground Initiative, a long-term plan to relocate 90 percent of families and infrastructure away from coastal areas threatened by sea level rise.
The program’s release cited independent analysis by Professor Stephen Howes, director of the Development Policy Centre at the Australian National University, finding Nauru’s national income grew by an average 4.9 percent per person between 2009 and 2024, with employment rising from 47 percent to 64 percent of the population between the 2011 and 2021 censuses and unemployment falling from 23 percent to 5 percent.
“If any other boom worldwide has delivered similarly stunning results in such a short period, I am not aware of it,” Howes said in his research, according to the release.
Clark said the program is “tightly-controlled and highly regulated.” An earlier Nauru passport-sale program was shut down in 2003 after international security concerns, and the current program’s legislation requires citizenship criteria to align with Financial Action Task Force standards, according to the Nauru government.
