The history of Easter Island can teach us about sustainability
8 December 2022

Easter Island attracts large numbers of tourists because of the national park and its monumental and world-famous stone statues that stare sternly out over the island.
Tourism has exploded on Easter Island over the last twenty years – something that has led to both financial gain and major encroachments on the island's environment. Researchers from Uppsala are now studying how history can teach us to build a more sustainable society – both on Easter Island and in other parts of the world.
Easter Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site off the coast of Chile, is an island the size of Fårö with only a few thousand inhabitants. The island attracts large numbers of tourists because of the national park and its monumental and world-famous stone statues that stare sternly out over the island. But tourism, which has grown exponentially on the island over the last twenty years, has come at a price. Plastic litter in particular is a major problem.
“When I was there in the 1980s, the sandy beach was white and there were almost no people around. When I came back in the early 00s, I thought the sand looked blue, and when I looked closer I saw that it was due to tiny, tiny pieces of plastic washed up by the sea from every corner of the Earth,” says Helene Martinsson-Wallin, Professor of Archeology at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University.
Major changes to the environment
The small Polynesian island off the coast of Chile has also undergone major changes to its environment throughout its history. Heavy logging by the island's population from the 14th century led to deforestation, depleted soil and numerous natural disasters. However, the indigenous people later developed new farming methods and thus survived.

As part of a collaboration between Uppsala University, Chile and the indigenous Rapa Nui people, researchers such as Martinsson-Wallin are now investigating how to combine the tourism industry with a focus on sustainability, and how to learn from history's mistakes to achieve that.
“If we’re splitting hairs, no societies have been sustainable, but we are now facing a global crisis and need to learn from history in order to avoid making the same mistakes again,” she adds.
“I want to understand the historical processes that have led to people altering landscapes and cultures and how we identify ourselves through them. Today, we have reached an epoch, the Anthropocene, in which humans dictate the conditions, so as a humanist I have a long-term perspective within the contemporary discussion on sustainability issues on how we humans have acted.”
Around 100,000 tourists per year
According to Martinsson-Wallin, in the late 1980s around 2,000 tourists per year visited the geographically isolated island. Today, the figure is around 100,000 per year and increasing all the time. On the one hand, tourism has become the island's main industry. Most of the population make a living from tourism in some way and many have become wealthy from it. On the other hand, that same tourism has put great strain on both the environment and the wider society.
“The people of Easter Island have themselves started to become more aware of the environmental destruction and now want to see a cap on tourism along with more education about respecting nature, people and the way in which everything is connected. We need to see this from a holistic perspective and be aware of the connections between the individual parts. We therefore look closely at how the local change processes are designed,” explains Martinsson-Wallin.
Tensions between Chileans and the indigenous people
Social sustainability is also a factor, however. The increased influx of people to the island, which only has one real settlement, has led to tensions between Chileans and the island's indigenous Rapa Nui people and changing dynamics between permanent residents and transient visitors.
Building a functioning and normal society on the basis of all of these aspects poses a challenge. Through various interview projects, Martinsson-Wallin and her colleagues study how indigenous identity and cultural heritage can interact with tourism.
“We now need to highlight these issues and build a comprehensive picture of the various factors and how they affect each other using laws and policies. That way we can show: this is what’s happening and this is what we can do,” adds Martinsson-Wallin.
Collaboration the key to change
“Collaborations and knowledge exchanges between countries are an important avenue for achieving change and for combining sustainability with visits to the island,” continues Martinsson-Wallin.
“We need to work on both sustainable destination development, that is, what we can do to manage water resources, waste and the number of tourists who come to the island – developing a slower form of tourism; but also on raising awareness among both the local population and tourists, to show them how they can contribute by using the available resources in a sustainable way.
“The best administrators are those who live there, because they want to ensure both welfare and a good environment.”
How can this knowledge be used in similar situations globally?
“In New Zealand, where the indigenous people are the Maori – Polynesians just like the Easter Islanders – they use inherited traditions to educate themselves about preserving their heritage. And there is hope for change, for example in how people on Easter Island have started replanting forests. The locals are now working hard to make the island sustainable.”
Anna Hedlund
Facts: Helene Martinsson-Wallin
Title: Professor of Archaeology at Uppsala University and Adjunct Professor at the National University of Samoa.
Lives: On Gotland, where she works at Campus Gotland as a lecturer and researcher.
Family: Husband Paul Wallin, also Lecturer in Archaeology, and two adult sons.
Last book read: Stolen by Ann-Helen Laestadius.
Favourite leisure activity: “I like knitting and embroidery, so I do that when I want to relax. I also really like crafts and ceramics.”
What makes me angry: Injustice and when complicated things are simplified. Populism!
What makes me happy: My children and my friends. And when I see students standing on their own two feet and putting their ideas into practice.
News
-
“Most people can relate to music”
20 juni 2023
Mattias Lundberg’s area of research is liturgical music from the Renaissance. However, as a professor of musicology, he is used to covering the history of music in its entirety, and in recent years he has done precisely this in radio broadcasts fr...
-
Music Professor Mattias Lundberg receives Royal Medal
06 juni 2023
Mattias Lundberg is familiar from several series on Sveriges Radio’s channel P2, most recently “Fråga musikprofessorn” (“Ask the Music Professor”). Now he is being awarded a royal medal. “I’m pleased that musicology and the humanities are receivi...
-
“The public is generally poorly informed”
29 mars 2023
Hello May-Britt Öhman, researcher at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism and expert contributor to the Government's Committee on Reindeer Lands.What is the purpose of this inquiry?
-
From living heritage to zombie churches
22 mars 2023
Churches are preserved by an antiquarian system that risks killing them instead of keeping them alive. The Swedish State and the Church of Sweden therefore need to define new joint visions and goals to enable the ecclesiastical cultural heritage t...
-
Democracy researchers to participate in literature festival
22 mars 2023
War, crime and literature as a path to reconciliation is the theme of the Uppsala International Literature Festival on March 23–25. One of the organisers is the Democracy and Higher Education research programme at Uppsala University. Christina Kul...
-
ERC grant for research into Swedish slavery
03 februari 2023
Fredrik Thomasson, researcher at the Department of History at Uppsala University, has received the ERC Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). This grant relates to a project on Swedish colonial history on the island of Saint ...
-
The names given to the clouds, an important part of the university's history
04 januari 2023
The book “Molnspanare– en meteorologisk historia” (Cloud spotters – a meteorological history) tells of the emergence of meteorology as a scientific subject. Among other things, you can read about how the Latin names and classification of the cloud...
-
The history of Easter Island can teach us about sustainability
08 december 2022
Tourism has exploded on Easter Island over the last twenty years – something that has led to both financial gain and major encroachments on the island's environment. Researchers from Uppsala are now studying how history can teach us to build a mo...
-
Nobel Prize-winning literature often published by small publishing houses
05 december 2022
During the Christmas trade period, books written by the latest Nobel Prize laureate tend to sell at least as well as the more traditional bestsellers. It is very important for publishers to have Nobel Prize winners on their lists, according to res...
-
Conference: 30 years of EU citizenship
21 november 2022
This year marks 30 years since European Union citizenship came into being. It will be highlighted at an international, interdisciplinary conference in Uppsala on 22–23 November. Both researchers and all those interested are welcome to attend.
-
New honorary doctors in the Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences
03 november 2022
The faculties at Uppsala University have decided on the award of honorary doctorates for 2022. Among the new honorary doctors at faculties in the Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences are researchers in economic geography, family l...
-
The vulnerability of surrogate mothers in a global market
17 oktober 2022
A new dissertation on surrogacy highlights Thai women's experiences of having acted as surrogate mothers. The dissertation shows the women's vulnerability in a global surrogacy industry, but also provides a more nuanced picture of what makes women...
-
Historical discoveries as Linnaeus Garden is excavated
07 oktober 2022
Unique pots, eighteenth-century porcelain and the bones of countless fish and birds: archaeologists who have been excavating part of the Linnaeus Garden have come across a wealth of exciting objects that can tell us more about the people and anima...
-
Popular 18th-century medicine in a new form
05 september 2022
Hello to Nils-Otto Ahnfelt, PhD pharmacist and visiting researcher at the Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences. Together with the historian of science Hjalmar Fors, you have developed a reconstruction of the 300-year-old medicine Hjärnes Testa...
-
Torgny Segerstedt Medal and Geijer Prize winners announced
05 september 2022
This year’s Torgny Segerstedt Medal has been awarded to Mikael Stenmark, professor in philosophy of religion at the Department of Theology. The Geijer Prize goes to Viktor Persarvet and Astrid Wendel-Hansen.
-
Digging from the present down to antiquity
30 augusti 2022
Welcome to the Viking Age! The archaeology students, with their trowels and their scrapers, have dug past the medieval layers and made their way down to the 11th century, approximately 30 centimetres below today's ground level. During the seminar ...
-
The sheep – Gotland’s symbol of sustainability
14 juni 2022
Sheep are the strongest symbol of sustainability on Gotland, according to Gurbet Peker. Not only do real ones graze all over the island, you can even find sheep sculpted in concrete in Visby. Peker researches the day-to-day lives of lamb farmers i...
-
Can democracy solve the climate crisis?
13 juni 2022
Hello Linda Wedlin, organisor and moderator of a panel discussion during Almedalen Week with the theme ‘What knowledge and what kind of democracy is needed for a successful climate transition?’ What are you going to be discussing?
-
Mapping people of the past by means of their bones
09 maj 2022
What is the best way to find out about a human being or animal that has been dead for perhaps several centuries? “Study the bones” is what Sabine Sten, professor of osteoarchaeology, would say. They can reveal an individual's age, body length, DNA...
-
Transforming space and society in Kiruna
24 mars 2022
State and corporate ideas about nature, people and the future played a decisive role in the development of Kiruna as a mining town over a century ago. Since 2004, when 6,000 Kiruna residents were informed that they would have to move because of gr...