IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/wpaper/27864.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why Easter Island collapsed: an answer for an enduring question

Author

Listed:
  • Pakandam, Barzin

Abstract

Easter Island is the most isolated inhabited spot on Earth, devoid of heavy timber and most resources. Yet, the first European travellers to the island marvelled at large and delicately carved statues covering the whole of the island. For centuries, they wondered how those statues were built and transported, resorting to myth and fantasy to explain them. In the twentieth century, it was revealed that the first settlers to inhabit the island encountered a resource rich and bountiful tropical land, abundant in resources. They developed a complex society with strong hierarchy and sophisticated religious rituals, including the carving, transporting, and erecting of the large statues. Gradually, they exploited their resource base to extinction, and consequently fell into decline. Historians have put to rest any theories about the transport and erection of statues. Instead, they debate the causes for decline, and wonder why the islanders permitted the continued exploitation of their resource base, even after they were aware that they were causing severe damages to the environment. Jared Diamond has asked the question, “What were they thinking when they cut down the last palm tree?” This study examines the available historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence, and combines it with theories of institutional economics pertaining to the management and governing of common-pool resources, in order to arrive at a theory for explaining why Easter Islanders permitted the destruction of their island habitat, and what motivated them to continue doing so. The results show that Easter Island’s ecosystem was unusually fragile, and consequently, in the long-term, decline and collapse was inevitable. The study concludes with implications for modern society.

Suggested Citation

  • Pakandam, Barzin, 2009. "Why Easter Island collapsed: an answer for an enduring question," Economic History Working Papers 27864, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:wpaper:27864
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/27864/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brander, James A & Taylor, M Scott, 1998. "The Simple Economics of Easter Island: A Ricardo-Malthus Model of Renewable Resource Use," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(1), pages 119-138, March.
    2. Good, David H. & Reuveny, Rafael, 2006. "The fate of Easter Island: The limits of resource management institutions," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 473-490, June.
    3. Grossman, Herschel I. & Mendoza, Juan, 2003. "Scarcity and appropriative competition," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 747-758, November.
    4. Anderies, John M., 2000. "On modeling human behavior and institutions in simple ecological economic systems," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 393-412, December.
    5. Pezzey, John C. V. & Anderies, John M., 2003. "The effect of subsistence on collapse and institutional adaptation in population-resource societies," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 299-320, October.
    6. Elinor Ostrom, 2000. "Collective Action and the Evolution of Social Norms," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 137-158, Summer.
    7. H. Scott Gordon, 1954. "The Economic Theory of a Common-Property Resource: The Fishery," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Chennat Gopalakrishnan (ed.), Classic Papers in Natural Resource Economics, chapter 9, pages 178-203, Palgrave Macmillan.
    8. Koopmans, Tjalling C, 1977. "Concepts of Optimality and Their Uses," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(3), pages 261-274, June.
    9. Benny Peiser, 2005. "From Genocide to Ecocide: The Rape of Rapa Nui," Energy & Environment, , vol. 16(3), pages 513-539, July.
    10. Fernandez, Raquel & Rodrik, Dani, 1991. "Resistance to Reform: Status Quo Bias in the Presence of Individual-Specific Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1146-1155, December.
    11. Benny Peiser, 2005. "From Genocide to Ecocide: The Rape of Rapa Nui," Energy & Environment, , vol. 16(3-4), pages 513-539, July.
    12. H. Scott Gordon, 1954. "The Economic Theory of a Common-Property Resource: The Fishery," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(2), pages 124-124.
    13. Reuveny, Rafael & Decker, Christopher S., 2000. "Easter Island: historical anecdote or warning for the future?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 271-287, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Robert J. DiNapoli & Carl P. Lipo & Terry L. Hunt, 2021. "Triumph of the Commons: Sustainable Community Practices on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-23, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Roman, Sabin & Bullock, Seth & Brede, Markus, 2017. "Coupled Societies are More Robust Against Collapse: A Hypothetical Look at Easter Island," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 264-278.
    2. Kuil, Linda & Carr, Gemma & Prskawetz, Alexia & Salinas, José Luis & Viglione, Alberto & Blöschl, Günter, 2019. "Learning from the Ancient Maya: Exploring the Impact of Drought on Population Dynamics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 1-16.
    3. Fletcher, C.S. & Hilbert, David W., 2007. "Resilience in landscape exploitation systems," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 201(3), pages 440-452.
    4. López, Ramón & Schiff, Maurice, 2013. "Interactive dynamics between natural and man-made assets: The impact of external shocks," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 1-15.
    5. David Croix & Davide Dottori, 2008. "Easter Island’s collapse: a tale of a population race," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 27-55, March.
    6. Pezzey, John C. V. & Anderies, John M., 2003. "The effect of subsistence on collapse and institutional adaptation in population-resource societies," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 299-320, October.
    7. Zachary Dockstader & Chris T. Bauch & Madhur Anand, 2019. "Interconnections Accelerate Collapse in a Socio-Ecological Metapopulation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-13, March.
    8. Nagase, Yoko & Uehara, Takuro, 2011. "Evolution of population-resource dynamics models," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 9-17.
    9. James A. Brander, 2007. "Viewpoint: Sustainability: Malthus revisited?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(1), pages 1-38, February.
    10. Tarui, Nori & Mason, Charles F. & Polasky, Stephen & Ellis, Greg, 2008. "Cooperation in the commons with unobservable actions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 37-51, January.
    11. Wei-Bin Zhang, 2015. "Oscillations in a Growth Model with Endogenous Wealth, Resource, Housing, and Elastic Labour Supply," International Journal of Economics and Empirical Research (IJEER), The Economics and Social Development Organization (TESDO), vol. 3(9), pages 458-472, September.
    12. Mason, Charles F. & Polasky, Stephen & Tarui, Nori, 2017. "Cooperation on climate-change mitigation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 43-55.
    13. Olsson, Ola, 2008. "Resource Conflict in Vulnerable Environments: Three Models Applied to Darfur," Working Papers in Economics 325, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    14. Wei-Bin Zhang, 2017. "Growth with Endogenous Capital, Knowledge, and Renewable Resources," Romanian Statistical Review, Romanian Statistical Review, vol. 65(1), pages 19-37, March.
    15. Wei-Bin ZHANG, 2014. "Human Capital, Wealth, and Renewable Resources," Expert Journal of Economics, Sprint Investify, vol. 2(1), pages 1-20.
    16. Libois, François, 2022. "Success and failure of communities managing natural resources: Static and dynamic inefficiencies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    17. Pu-yan Nie & Peng Sun & Bill Z. Yang, 2014. "A Dynamic Study on Ecological Disaster, Government Regulation, and Renewable Resources," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(2), pages 410-442, April.
    18. Gardner Brown, 2000. "Renewable Natural Resource Management and Use Without Markets," Working Papers 0025, University of Washington, Department of Economics.
    19. Manzoor, Talha & Rovenskaya, Elena & Muhammad, Abubakr, 2016. "Game-theoretic insights into the role of environmentalism and social-ecological relevance: A cognitive model of resource consumption," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 340(C), pages 74-85.
    20. José Ramón Ruiz Tamarit & Manuel Sánchez Moreno, 2006. "Optimal Regulation And Growth In A Natural-Resource-Based Economy," Working Papers. Serie AD 2006-21, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N0 - Economic History - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:wpaper:27864. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager on behalf of EH Dept. (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/chlseuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.