One theory as to how the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island faced extinction is that their obsession for carving moais led to mass deforestation, preventing the island from being able to sustain life. This may be one big analogy to what is happening to the human race and earth, where instead of the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island, it is human beings on Earth, if nothing is done to the management of natural resources in the international society. However, it will not be. Even though there are trends showing the decrease in fish population, the rise and fall of climate change, and other environmental issues caused by human beings, unlike the Rapa Nui people who watched their resources drain away, attempts are being made to tackle these problems, no matter how successful they turn out to be.
The situation the Rapa Nui people faced against deforestation and the situation between the people on earth and the environment may be symbolic in meaning, but the problems happening to the environment are much harder to solve nowadays. The Rapa Nui people, in order to solve the problem with deforestation, could simply stop carving moais, the large stone heads. However, the international environment is interdependent, thus, creating a difficult collective goods problem.
Even though 70% of Earth is water, overfishing is becoming a serious problem since 1.2 billion people are dependent on fish as their main source of protein. Even though actions such as fishing farms may seem like an alternative, it is not. Most farm fishes are carnivorous, thus, around 5 kilograms of wild fish is needed to produce 1 kilogram of farm salmon. Fishing farms do not create more fish; it simply converts low value small fish to higher value big fish. Overfishing is not only caused by the increase in population size. It is also due to greater access to global markets and seafood dependency. If this continues, Earth will run out of fish by the near future. Fortunately, throughout history, efforts had been made to solve this problem, though how successful they are can be debatable. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea treaty deals with overfishing, where states need to make sure their resources in their exclusive economic zone are not endangered by over-exploitation. Also, Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs), a method enacted by the government to regulate fishing by having regulators set a species-specific total allowable catch, are adopted by countries such as Netherlands, Iceland, and Canada. All these attempts to stop overfishing, such as the ITQs, removal of subsidies, and artificial stocking, however successful they are, makes us different from the Rapa Nui people since we are trying to change while they watched their resources drain away.
Climate change, on the other hand, is a much more difficult problem to solve. Climate change has been very difficult for sates to tackle and take collective action on because like fish, they are not marked by boundaries. The air is free moving, thus, however much carbon dioxide is emitted into the air by a certain nation, it will affect Earth as a whole. Nevertheless, when it is necessary, countries were able to agree on environmental issues. For example, when there was a problem with the ozone layer, caused by ozone depletion, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was designed to protect the ozone layer. Another example can be referred to the time when multilateral and bilateral approaches are used to solve the problem of acid rain. In November of 2013, the United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Warsaw, Poland. United States and China reached an agreement to cut carbon emissions, where United States aims for reduction of a quarter by 2025 and China set goals for emissions to fall after 2030.
The human race will not end up like the Rapa Nui people! Even though resources are slowly being drained by over usage and exploitation, unlike the Rapa Nui people, efforts had been made toward fixing such problems. One may argue that these efforts made toward solving these problems are mostly ineffective, at least efforts had been made, thus, we are not at all like the Rapa Nui people. If the human race does end up facing extinction, it will not be because we used up all our resources.
The situation the Rapa Nui people faced against deforestation and the situation between the people on earth and the environment may be symbolic in meaning, but the problems happening to the environment are much harder to solve nowadays. The Rapa Nui people, in order to solve the problem with deforestation, could simply stop carving moais, the large stone heads. However, the international environment is interdependent, thus, creating a difficult collective goods problem.
Even though 70% of Earth is water, overfishing is becoming a serious problem since 1.2 billion people are dependent on fish as their main source of protein. Even though actions such as fishing farms may seem like an alternative, it is not. Most farm fishes are carnivorous, thus, around 5 kilograms of wild fish is needed to produce 1 kilogram of farm salmon. Fishing farms do not create more fish; it simply converts low value small fish to higher value big fish. Overfishing is not only caused by the increase in population size. It is also due to greater access to global markets and seafood dependency. If this continues, Earth will run out of fish by the near future. Fortunately, throughout history, efforts had been made to solve this problem, though how successful they are can be debatable. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea treaty deals with overfishing, where states need to make sure their resources in their exclusive economic zone are not endangered by over-exploitation. Also, Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs), a method enacted by the government to regulate fishing by having regulators set a species-specific total allowable catch, are adopted by countries such as Netherlands, Iceland, and Canada. All these attempts to stop overfishing, such as the ITQs, removal of subsidies, and artificial stocking, however successful they are, makes us different from the Rapa Nui people since we are trying to change while they watched their resources drain away.
Climate change, on the other hand, is a much more difficult problem to solve. Climate change has been very difficult for sates to tackle and take collective action on because like fish, they are not marked by boundaries. The air is free moving, thus, however much carbon dioxide is emitted into the air by a certain nation, it will affect Earth as a whole. Nevertheless, when it is necessary, countries were able to agree on environmental issues. For example, when there was a problem with the ozone layer, caused by ozone depletion, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was designed to protect the ozone layer. Another example can be referred to the time when multilateral and bilateral approaches are used to solve the problem of acid rain. In November of 2013, the United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Warsaw, Poland. United States and China reached an agreement to cut carbon emissions, where United States aims for reduction of a quarter by 2025 and China set goals for emissions to fall after 2030.
The human race will not end up like the Rapa Nui people! Even though resources are slowly being drained by over usage and exploitation, unlike the Rapa Nui people, efforts had been made toward fixing such problems. One may argue that these efforts made toward solving these problems are mostly ineffective, at least efforts had been made, thus, we are not at all like the Rapa Nui people. If the human race does end up facing extinction, it will not be because we used up all our resources.