Triumph of the Commons: Sustainable Community Practices on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Robert J. DiNapoli, Carl P. Lipo and Terry L. Hunt
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Robert J. DiNapoli: Environmental Studies Program, Department of Anthropology, Harpur College of Arts and Sciences, Binghamton University, State University of New York, Binghamton, NY 13902, USA
Carl P. Lipo: Environmental Studies Program, Department of Anthropology, Harpur College of Arts and Sciences, Binghamton University, State University of New York, Binghamton, NY 13902, USA
Terry L. Hunt: W.A. Franke Honors College and School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 21, 1-23

Abstract: The history of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) has long been framed as a parable for how societies can fail catastrophically due to the selfish actions of individuals and a failure to wisely manage common-pool resources. While originating in the interpretations made by 18th-century visitors to the island, 20th-century scholars recast this narrative as a “tragedy of the commons,” assuming that past populations were unsustainable and selfishly overexploited the limited resources on the island. This narrative, however, is now at odds with a range of archaeological, ethnohistoric, and environmental evidence. Here, we argue that while Rapa Nui did experience large-scale deforestation and ecological changes, these must be contextualized given past land-use practices on the island. We provide a synthesis of this evidence, showing that Rapa Nui populations were sustainable and avoided a tragedy of the commons through a variety of community practices. We discuss this evidence in the context of Elinor Ostrom’s “core design principles” for sustainable communities and argue that Rapa Nui provides a model for long-term sustainability.

Keywords: archaeology; collapse; Polynesia; resilience; tragedy of the commons (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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