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Why the Name? 7 Billion reasons...

Category: Environment

The collapse of the civilisation on Easter Island, or Rapa Nui in the native language, became very popular story after the film “Rapa Nui” (1994) and the book of the American biologist Jared Diamond “Collapse – How societies choose to fail or survive” (2005). In many ways, it has been generalised into a fable, but nonetheless one that is entirely relevant not least this week, when the world’s population reached 7 Billion...

population 7 billlion

In the scenario shown in both film and book (albeit a little hollywood-ised), the human population of the native Rapa Nui people grew too large for the Easter Island habitat to sustain. A fierce overexploitation of the limited natural resources of the island occurred during construction work for the Moai – the large statues that still remain on the island in vigil. These statues became a symbol of power and prestige on the small island and required a great deal of natural resources to build, specifically large quantities of timber to transport and erect the structures.

Trees are needed to hold soil in place and vice versa - it's part of their job in nature. So after clearing the forest of large grown palm-trees, the soil started to dissapear quickly, eroded by the heavy rain falls and strong Pacific winds. The barren volcanic rocks could no longer sustain the topsoil which supported all life on Easter Island– from bugs and insects, to mammals and birds - all flora and fauna in some way were connected to a habitat which had eroded away. On a young volcanic island, life is more precarious – deforestation can become an irreversible process, as young trees have neither the soil nor the protection of larger neighbours that is needed to establish this environment and restart the system.

The statues and structures that are now one of the Seven Wonders of the World may have come at the expense of the environment. This in effect meant that it became increasingly difficult, then near impossible, for farmers to grow crops and feed the population – and with the forest habitats gone, hunting options were slim.

In the resulting famine, chaos and civil war gripped one of the most developed cultures in the Pacific Ocean - with their own scripture and astonishing construction skill – the Rapa Nui civilisation rapidly collapsed.

Sir David Attenborough Explains...

This scenario is based primarily on the discovery during an archaeology expedition prior to 1961 of unknown palm-like pollen in sediments, plus comparisons with ecosystems of similar geography without human populations. The layer with pollen was found in various cores recovered from swamps, also root imprints in fossil soils and subfossil nuts, found in the lava caves, prove that Easter Island once supported large grown trees. Today the landscape of Rapa Nui is dominated by meadows instead and looks much like the moorland in the west country (which was created in the same way – deforestation, although to build ships to fight the Armada, rather than statues) and this land now covers 90% of the island. The rest is shrub lands and planted forests of Eucalyptus trees, which host almost no native species, only invasive plant species and urban vegetation.

The metaphor is pretty clear. The society of Easter Island, either ignoring or unaware of the destruction of their environment, was finally doomed to extinction – valuing symbols of status over common sense and sustainability, their way of life could not be sustained by the small ecosystem at their disposal.

We should not be too harsh on the humankind and definitely not critical of the Rapa Nui people - modern civilisations have conveniently avoided this fate by moving around or trading once shortages become serious. The world is much larger than Easter Island and their culture would have had a better chance should their island have been four times the size, or less remote. But they couldn't move on once they'd used up their island's resources and life began to struggle.

This trait of overexploiting ecosystems is not exclusive to mankind. Humans have studied populations and population collapse for centuries – we even make use of it when we make beer (the yeast population booms until the barrel runs low on sugar, or the alcohol produced from their waste makes their habitat (the beer) impossible to survive in). In these processes, the system can’t be restarted; the changed environment is permanent.

The story of Rapanui is a grim fable, and entirely relevant to sustainability in the modern age – Earth cannot support 7 Billion people forever, yet this population is increasing and like the Rapanui, we are an island in space. It is likely the Rapanui did not know the error until it was too late, but for us there has been a clear early warning on climate change and sustainability, reaching out from the 9th century AD all along - it's hard to find an excuse why we wouldnt do anything about it. So we can’t choose to just ignore sustainability once we know.

And this is our challenge - a lot of people aren’t aware of why it’s so important.

So why the name? Well, for a brand on a mission to raise awareness of sustainability, Rapanui is possibly the best real life example of what happens if you dont act, once you know.

Bibliography: (Climate, Overpopulation & Environment – Scientific American - The Rapa Nui debate By David Bressan, October 31, 2011)