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The following information is a brief overview of the Easter Island story, adapted from Jarrod Diamond's publication, 'Collapse - How Societies Choose to Fail or survive'.

Easter Island, with an area of only 64 square miles, is the world's most isolated piece of habitable land. It lies in the Pacific Ocean more than 3,200 kilometres west of the nearest continent (South America), and 2,200 km from even the nearest habitable island (Pitcairn). In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism.

Pollen records show that destruction of Easter's forests was well under way by the year 800, just a few centuries after the start of human settlement. Then charcoal from wood fires came to fill the sediment cores, while the pollen of palms, other trees and woody shrubs decreased or disappeared, and the pollen of the grasses that replaced the forest became more abundant. Not long after the year 1400 the palm finally became extinct, not only as a result of being chopped down but also because the now ever-present rats prevented its regeneration (of the dozens of preserved palm nuts discovered in caves on Easter, all had been chewed by rats and could no longer germinate). While the Hauhau tree did not become extinct in Polynesian times, its numbers declined drastically until there weren't enough left to make ropes from. By the time European explorers visited Easter Island, only a single, nearly dead Toromiro tree remained on the island, and even that lone survivor has now disappeared.

Every day newspapers report details of famished countries - Afghanistan, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Zaire - where soldiers have appropriated the wealth or where central government is yielding to local gangs of thugs. As the risk of nuclear war lessens, we are no longer concerned about ending our existence with a big bang, and so there is nothing obvious to make us stop and think about our current course of development. With the gradual and incremental nature of climate change, the risk is now that we will just wind down, slowly, and end in a whimper. Corrective action is blocked by vested interests, by well-intentioned political and business leaders, and by their electorates, all of whom are perfectly correct in not noticing big changes from year to year. Instead, each year there are just more people and fewer resources on Earth.

If mere thousands of Easter Islanders with only stone tools and their own muscle power sufficed to destroy their environment and society, how can billions of people with metal tools and machine power fail to do worse? 

But there is one crucial difference. The Easter Islanders had no books and no histories of other doomed societies. Unlike the Easter Islanders, we have past-information that can save us. Our main hope for our children's generation is that we may now choose to learn from the fates of societies like Easter's.

Discussion Questions:

1. What were some major problems in the Easter Island civilization?
2. Who was responsible for these problems?
3. What do you consider as an unethical choice, decision or behaviour and why?
4. What could have been done to improve the outcome of these civilisations?
5. Are there similar scenarios happening in the world today?
6. What lessons could the leaders of today learn from the downfall of ancient civilisations?

Sustainable Tourism Development :

1. (a) Write down your own definition for sustainable tourism development and explain the triple bottom line of sustainability?
2. Consider the following statement:

"Any new concept adopted by a hospitality organisation is considered sustainable only if the said concept is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable." Describe what is meant by socially sustainable?

1. Define Tourism and identify the factors that motivate people to Travel.
2. Explain the benefits and costs of Tourism?
3. Distinguish between Mass Tourism and Alternative Tourism. 
4. Determine the factors that can affect Tourist Behaviour.