The Easter Island is one of the most isolated islands in the world. It is located in Chile. The people of the Easter Island are called the Rapa Nui. They began craving giant statues out of volcanic rocks. These statues are known as “Moai”. The tragedy of commons is an economic problem. It occurs when individuals try to get the best of the given resource. When someone takes a lot of the resource, the others have little or none to survive. Easter Island is an example of the tragedy of commons. The Easter Island was once an island that had many living species. The people of the island used the natural resources like the trees for campfire and to build houses. Also the rats needed food so they ate the nuts. By using these resources …show more content…
The people and rats took advantage of their resources. They never thought that eventually it would run out. They did not think about what would happen in the future. You have to plan it out and communicate on how to use the natural resources to survive. In class we did a lab on the tragedy of commons. In the first round we could not communicate on how much food to take for our families. We ended up dying because there was no food left. The second round we got to communicate and share the food equally. We all survived that round. The tragedy of commons teaches you to use your natural resources the right way. The people on the Easter Island did not use their natural resources in the right way that is why they ran
The island is about 4 square miles and is today a place for tourism in the great lakes. Many thousands of years ago though this was a little piece of land with bluffs reaching high above its surroundings and was a merely a small piece of land surrounded by water. It was because of these bluffs the appearance of the island resembled a turtle and led to it being named “The Great Turtle” (Piljac, 1998). Currently the island reaches several hundred feet above the lake and it’s because of this geography that many nations saw this as a perfect military post and would be used over and over again throughout its history as such.
the land and yet it had such a weak economy and could use the money
...have been destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people have reaped the consequences, yet they are only Pacific Islanders; they lay dying from cancer, being born with birth defect, and even mothers giving birth to stillborn babies. (Keever, 1-23)
To begin with, the Lorax and Easter Island have many differences but the most obvious one is that in the Lorax one person/thing (the onceler) was responsible for the destruction and the depletion of a resource. Unlike the Lorax a whole generation of people led to the destruction and depletion of many resources, and not just one individual profited from the exploitation but a whole species of people did. In the Lorax you can see that the onceler used the truffula trees for economic purposes. He got filthy rich from the exploitation. Whereas, in Easter Island a whole group of people benefited from it, they build pyramids, cut down trees to build temples, and depleted the land of all its natural sources.
Women and children would go into the fields and forests to gather plants, roots, berries, fruits, mushrooms, and nuts. Most of this food was eaten as soon as it was ripe. Sometimes there was so much plant food that the surplus could be dried and stored for the wintertime. In the spring, there were numerous berries,
Island (some being sent back to their home country), as well as the harsh living
Between the years 300BC-400BC, a group of inhabitants landed ashore the island of Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui. Once ashore, these settlers began collecting resources and learned to survive with no help from the outside, stranded on an island in the middle of the Pacific. They created methods to hunt, fish, make clothing, and cook food properly. In addition, the people of Rapa Nui also separated into different groups or tribes. These tribes coexisted on the island for some time – until civil wars broke out across the island. The inhabitants of Rapa Nui disappeared from the island without a trace. The cause of their disappearance is unknown although experts believe the inhabitants of Rapa Nui were irresponsible with their resources.
on their territory, they soon realized their crops could not grown properly. The land they
The only solution to tragedy of commons is to come up with a coercion that we collectively agreed upon. As he mentioned, “only individual’s conscience will solve it”
The natives would give back to the world that gave unto them. With an unfortelling future the Native
... harvest fruits and berries and grains from the island. This will supplement the food that can be grown and harvested on the island. Everyone on the island will share the food available equally. If a point comes where there is more food than what the people can eat, at that point we will dry grains, fruit, and vegetables for use later. Even meat can be thinly sliced and smoked and dried to preserve it.
Garrett Hardin developed the concept of the Tragedy of the Commons. The basic concept is a giant pasture that is for everyone to have a piece of land and for the herdsman to have as many cattle a possible to sustain the land. This land should be able to maintain itself for quite a long time because of cattle dying as well as the population staying relatively stable. But at some point the population will begin growing and the herdsman will want to maximize their profits by having more cattle, which in return the land cannot sustain. The herdsman receives all the profit from adding one more animal to the pasture so the herdsman will eventually begin adding more cattle, but the overgrazing caused by that added animal will destroy the land making it uninhabitable for everyone. Thus you have the tragedy of the commons. For all the herdsman on the common, it is the only rational decision to make, adding another animal. This is the tragedy. Each man is compelled to add an infinite number of cattle to increase his profits, but in a world with limited resources it is impossible to continually grow. When resources are held "in common" with many people having access and ownership to it, then a rational person will increase their exploitation of it because the individual is receiving all the benefit, while everyone is sharing the costs.
In 1,850 A.D. the population was decimated to mere 111 sick and starving islanders, and for some reason all of the trees were gone. It is believed that the Rapa Nui cut all the islands trees down to aid in the sculpting and production of the massive Moai statues. The declination of trees and overall island life is what escalated the islanders to start fighting each other. The inhabitants had spread out and made clans around the production of Moai, trying to make the largest possible statues they could to please the gods (Henriksen 1-2). Then the islands first documented discovery was made by the Dutch explorer Admiral Roggeveen on Easter Sunday in 1722, ergo the name Easter Island (Judd 2). The dis-covery of the island by the Europeans wasn’t a good thing this is where all of the horrible diseases came from, which made the already high death count rise even more, and as if that wasn’t enough this discovery helped Peruvian slave ships find the island and kidnap the inhabitants to sell into slave
Overall, Robinson Crusoe’s ship crashing on the island forever changes the ecology, and biodiversity. Robinson colonized the island by introducing invasive species, European crops, and enclosing areas of the island. This colonization would lead to the islands decent in, wildlife habitation, and biodiversity. Although, these concerns would change the ecosystem on the fictional island they are the signs of colonization, and improvement in the lives of the inlands inhabits.