Earth and Easter: The Lessons We Can Learn From Rapa Nui [1]

In his chapter on Easter Island in the infamous book Collapse, Diamond finishes with this quote:

‘The parallels between Easter Island and the modern world are chillingly obvious. Thanks to globalisation, international trade, jet planes and internet, all countries on Earth today share resources and affect each other, just as did Easter’s dozen clans…those are the reasons why people see the collapse of Easter Island society as a metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us in out future’

Today’s society are facing an overwhelming amount of environmental problems, including; water problems, deforestation, end of tropical rainforests, overfishing, soil erosion and salinisation, global climate change, full utilisation of the world’s fresh water supplies, exhaustion of cheap energy resources, accumulation of toxic chemicals in water, food and soil, increase in human population and increase in the per capita impact of our population. Many past civilisations and societies collapsed due to one or more of these problems, for example the Mayan civilisation collapse due to a combination of environmental degradation, deforestation, a series of severe droughts, economic stress and socio-political upheaval (see Meera’s blog ‘The Lost Chronicles of Mesoamericans’ for more information on the causes behind the Mayan collapse). It is plain to see numerous parallels between the causes of collapse of the Mayans and the environmental problems we are facing today.

The similarities between Easter and today’s society are clear if you support the ‘ecocide’ theory suggested by Diamond and many others, however if you disagree with this theory and think that Easter collapsed due to either rats or the European’s arrival, other colonists, whalers and slave-traders then Easter as an analogy to Earth might not quite be so clear.

So, what parallels exist between Easter and today?

Population Expansion

The global population is growing exponentially, and is projected to carry on expanding if we do nothing, as shown by the diagram below. 

Over the past hundred years population growth has expanded from 0.9 billion in 1750 to today’s 6.9 billion. From Easter’s settlement to its peak population, a population rate growth of 3% per year has been estimated (Hunt and Lipo 2007) in comparison to our current world population growth rate of 1.14%. However, we cannot compare the two in this sense due to the vastly differing scales of the entire Earth and a 64 mile² island. Population growth rates mainly range from 0.1% to 3%, so its plain to see that both Easter’s society, and ours are alike when it comes to rapid population expansion.

Deforestation

The 2005 United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) report estimated that the Earth’s total forest area decreases by around 13 million hectares a year, due to a number of factors including clearing for grazing cattle, colonization (human settlement), infrastructure improvements, commercial agriculture and logging. This is plainly comparable to Easter’s deforestation as suggested by Diamond (2005), Meith and Bork (2010) and Anderson (1994) who suggested that the islander’s deforestation their island to the point of no trees to make space for settlement and farming, as well as for resources.

Soil Erosion

Soil erosion, or more generally landscape degradation, is a major problem facing the world today. Caused by land clearance (deforestation), overgrazing, depletion of soil nutrients through poor agricultural practices, poor irrigation, pollution, quarrying and urban sprawl, landscape degradation also had detrimental impacts to Easter. My previous post investigating a study by Meith and Bork (2005) highlights that soil erosion on Easter caused the abandonment of agriculture and human settlement on the Poike peninsula, and the breakdown of the ‘stone culture’. Today, soil erosion and landscape degradation is having similar effects, with an estimated 40% of the world’s agricultural land to be already degraded (Sample 2007), causing further resource depletion.

Resource Exploitation

Resource exploitation and depletion today, is arguably, one of the most serious environmental problems facing the world today, including the depletion of freshwater supplies, the exhaustion of energy and fossil fuel resources, overfishing and food and water scarcity. Common causes of resource depletion are overpopulation, slash and burn agricultural practises, erosion, forestry, overconsumption/excessive use of resources, pollution and irrigation. The majority of these causes (except pollution) contributed to resource depletion on Easter and most certainly contribute to our current society’s resource depletion. It is, again, evident that there are parallels between Easter and Earth, as Easter depleted its marine resources, food (indicated by the extinction of land birds), forests and agricultural land due to overpopulation, slash and burn, erosion and excessive use of resources (rolling the moai statues on tree trunks?).

I have to make it clear here, that looking at the parables between Earth and Easter means that we are supporting the ‘ecocide’ theory, and although it did most certainly have an impact on Easter, we must not forget the devastation caused by slave-raids and foreign diseases caused by the European’s arrival on Easter.

So what can, and have we learnt from Easter Island? Well you’ll just have to wait until the next post to find that out!