Easter Island

Throughout history there have been many examples of tragedy of the commons. Tragedy of the commons is when people in a certain area over exploit a common resource which leads toa higher problem. Tragedy of the commons normally happens when people get greedy and get more than they really need. For example, if one farmer is public grazing area were to add a cow over the limit the field can sustain it won’t do much damage but if the other farmers also add another cow to the field it could end up harming it to the point where it is no longer usable.This comes to show that if even a single person becomes greedy it could ruin so many things for other people. Ideas will be pulled out from Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons” to be used in this essay.

The documentary over Easter Island goes into its past. There was a theory that the people of the island sailed from South America to the tiny island, however a genetic markup was done of bones found on the island and it came out that the islanders had Polynesian ancestry. It is believed that Polynesians were exploring the islands and many settled there. Easter Island had plentiful fish, birds, and palm trees. At its prime, the island was populated by over 12,000 people. As time went on, the resources started to dwindle. When Europeans began to explore this island, they found no trees and yet palm tree pollen was found years later in the lakes. One theory is that the islanders made a sport out of building their statues and cut down all the trees to move them. With no more trees, they couldn’t build boats and birds wouldn’t come to the island anymore. They began to starve. The people turned

“The Tragedy of the Commons”, according to Hardin, is a societal problem arising from individuals depleting shared resources (1968, pg 1243). Hardin’s “commons” are the limited resources shared by society that are not regulated. In commercial cod fisheries, the commons is the fishing ground, or the ocean. The tragedy of the commons refers to a dilemma— individuals, maximizing their own utility, could collectively cause the depletion of common resources. This is because assuming that humans are self-interested rational beings, every individuals’ interest is to maximize their own gain by exploiting public resources, while the collective interest is to use the resources sustainably. Likewise, in commercial cod fisheries, the individual’s interest is to catch as many fish as possible to maximize profit. Yet, the collective interest is to fish at a level sustainable for cod fish to reproduce, so that not only our generation, but also our future generations will not run out of cod. Since we have hardly resolved the gap between individual interest and collective interest, the problem persists. This gap has already led to devastating consequences. In 2015, the cod stock in the Gulf of Maine is at 18 percent of what scientists deem to be a healthy population.

The Tragedy of the Commons and the Lorax bring to the people’s attention that a growing population that is growing as if there are infinite amount of resources will do severe damage to the environment. The Tragedy of the Commons was an essay written in 1968 by an American ecologist by name of Garret Hardin. Hardin explains in his essay that the Tragedy of the Commons is an economic problem in which every individual who tries to reap the greatest benefit from a given resource. Then when demand for that particular resource surpasses the supply, every individual who consumes another unit of that resource will directly harm others who cannot reap the benefit as well. This particular economic problem is analogous to what happens in the movie The Lorax. The Lorax is about a greedy businessman known as Once-ler who shows up to a forest. Then cuts down all the trees to make his invention, while being chastised by a furry orange create known as the Lorax but he doesn’t listen. By the end of the movie there are no more trees and all the animals have lost their homes and Once-ler is poor again. The Lorax indirectly address the issue of the Tragedy of the Commons since it deals with the fundamental problem of unlimited needs and wants and limited resources.

I was ask to choose a mysterious wonder of the world and write an essay about my reason for choosing; umpteenth wonders appeared in the search box; but only one uphold my attention the most-Easter Island. The isolate island with hundreds of enlarge Moai statues line next to each other facing east is a story need to read. Some of the Moai are delicate carved from past active volcanic ashes by the Easter Polynesian islanders three millennium ago. The quality of the island get a lot of discoveries such as the culture background, the significance about the heads and legendary facts thanks to the archaeologists whom took the time to pursuit the island. As close, my purpose for writing this essay to inscribe words together and hope it create sense

History has played out in different manners for many societies around the world depending on their location or use of resources. The main question this paper is trying to answer is whether geography and the distribution of natural resources determined the fate of societies in the past. Geography and the distribution of natural resources undoubtedly has and will continue to affect the way societies live throughout the world. This paper considers three case studies in order to answer this question. The first case study looks at is the orientation of the continents and how their geography effected those societies. Second, the effects extreme deforestation on Easter Island and how it lead to the disappearance of all natural resources and how this

Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is located on the west of the Chilean coast in the South Pacific Ocean. It is one of the most deserted islands in the world. It was founded by a Dutch Admiral Jacob Roggeveen on Easter Sunday April 5, 1722. That is where the name “Easter Island” comes from. The island is small measuring 60 sq. miles. Rapa Nui is mostly famous for the obscure statues ( Moai’s) that are giant human statues that are all spread all throughout the island. Archaeologists are still examining today how the early settlements moved them from where they are today.

The Easter Island heads. Rapa Nui has been a place of mystery since it was discovered in 1772. The name “Easter Island” is the European name given by Jacob Roggeveen. The mystery on Easter Island is the moai, otherwise known as the heads of Easter Island. How the moai got there is still in debate but there have been multiple proven theories of how they got there. The three main theories I will discuss are the rope theory, the wooden sledge theory and the walking theory.

Exploitation of seemingly unlimited natural resources and overfishing of our seas has been a common theme throughout human history and across cultures, and as global populations grow, these problems only compound. The basic nature of World History is to break down borders and remove nationalistic biases in the hope of finding an objective viewpoint, and humans exploiting environmental resources for short term gain is as cross-cultural a characteristic as they come.

Entire forests were beginning to vanish as their bark was being used for huts, canoes, harpoons and clothes. The disappearance of trees created a cascading effect in which affected the inhabitants more than they could imagine. Although the soil was not immensely fertile to begin with, the lack of tree roots made the soil turn into sand and unable to grow tropical fruits. The trees and the fruit which grew upon them provided land birds, both a home and a stable food source. Deforestation resulted in a rapid decrease in the bird population, which was a serious threat to food availability. In addition, fish were also stripped away from the Polynesian diet as both overfishing occurred, which declined the population of fish like tuna and the lack of wood in order to make canoes made fishing fleets marginalized. These environmental dangers sparked massive starvation for many of the common

When analyzing the tragedy of the commons one is able to see that a main component of the phenomenon is the exploitation of some type of resource. The exploitation of a resource is usually what leads to the tragedy which the tragedy of the commons speaks of, and as one may presume,

rain through clearing, the remaining trees will dry out and die. Though fewer species are

If deforestation keeps happening, which it probably will,where do tree frogs go without trees? What about monkeys? Where do birds lay their nests? What about humans? What about many insects?What about hunting strategies using trees? What about animals who need to feed on trees? I think you get my point. Many habitats are affected, the list goes on and on. One tree gives carbon dioxide for four people in just one day. Thats a lot! Can you imagine losing lots of trees? If one tree supplies oxygen for four people, why are we still cutting down many trees? Isn’t there enough reasons why we shouldn't cut down trees? If we keep letting all these people do this, can you imagine

Another result of deforestation is the loss or decline of animal habitats and the loss of animal diversity. (citation) Forests provide a shelter, a habitat and a food source for many species. Tropical rainforest provides habitats for a great amount of the worlds species and the only cover 7% of the earth’s surface and they are the most in danger by deforestation. (citation) Many animals that live in forests are herbivores and by deforestation it is removing their main food source, and it can be necessary for them to leave their home to search for food, which can result in starvation, death or forcing them to live in small forest fragments. (citation) Due to deforestation dozens of species are becoming extinct every day and by the middle of the century half of all the species could be lost. (citation)

It has been widely acknowledged that an increase in anthropogenic activity will put an ever-increasing pressure on the global and regional resources. Particularly in the South Pacific, where the resources are limited compared to large continents. The delicate relationship between the ecological systems of the Pacific makes these resources often scarce that are getting depleted at a faster rate than it is being recovered by the natural systems. Logging is an example of such an activity, which has dramatically increased as a direct consequence of the rising populations (For example, Solomon Islands). Indigenous people of the Pacific damaged many landscapes and habitats upon settlement. Deforestation (linked to logging) was a major disturbance on the islands of the South Pacific. On the contrary, the early settlers also learnt self-subsistence farming and positive forestry practices that are still widely used today (Clarke, 1990). Researchers have found a strong linkage between population size and depletion of natural resources. For example, Papua New Guinea or PNG was heavily covered in natural rain forest until the 1980, after when it was severely logged (Filer, 2013). This essay will focus on the historical and contemporary issues surrounding logging in the South Pacific and relate it to the rising population.