Managing the present and the future of smaller islands

Abstract

Human existence on islands in the middle of an ocean is, by nature of their remoteness, often comparatively small size with consequently few lifestyle options, and more vulnerable to change than in many other places. The vulnerability of islands to change increases with smaller islands (generally <5000 km² in area), for many of which the entire land area can be classed as 'coastal' and therefore vulnerable to change deriving from the ocean, from the land and from the air. The combination of small size and remoteness means that humans on such islands may occasionally have their trajectories of social and cultural development disrupted profoundly. A good example comes from remote 506 ha Pukapuka Atoll in the northern Cook Islands whose inhabitants divide their traditional history into two periods separated by 'te mate wolo' (The Great Death) about AD 1525 when a huge wave swept across the low island leaving only a handful of survivors (Beaglehole and Beaglehole 1938). Archaeologists investigating the enigmatic statue-building culture of Easter Island (Rapanui), some 2,250 km from the nearest land (Pitcairn Island) in the southeast Pacific, have long divided the island's history into two (Bahn and Flenley 1992): first, the statue-building period that celebrated a time of plenty; and, second, the statue-toppling and destruction period marking a time when conflict became rampant and culminated in the first written description of the island by Roggeveen in AD 1722 as having a 'wasted appearance'. Some have famously attributed this change to unsustainable human impacts on the land, particularly the cutting of trees (Diamond 20(5), while others regard it as the outcome of a natural change (Hunter-Anderson 1998).