Natural resources: timber, fish, cobalt

Land use: 1% arable land; 19% permanent crops; 5% meadows and pastures; 31% forest and woodland; 44% other

Environment: occasional cyclonic storm in January; includes five archipelagoes

Note: Makatea is one of three great phosphate rock islands in the Pacific (others are Banaba or Ocean Island in Kiribati and Nauru)

- People
Population: 190,181 (July 1990), growth rate 2.5% (1990)

Birth rate: 31 births/1,000 population (1990)

Death rate: 6 deaths/1,000 population (1990)

Net migration rate: 0 migrants/1,000 population (1990)

Infant mortality rate: 23 deaths/1,000 live births (1990)

Life expectancy at birth: 66 years male, 71 years female (1990)