ABSTRACT
During a conference in 1992—arranged by UNESCO and its international council for island development, INSULA—a number of specialists within different disciplines suggested as the first of its conclusions that the Earth is like an island in space and that its brittleness is most clearly reflected on small islands in the oceans (Bouamrane 1993). In the same year Bahn and Flenley published their book Easter Island, Earth Island, where they argued that Easter Island with its largely depleted natural resources could be seen as a microcosmic warning about what may happen to our entire planet. Since then, this perspective has been frequently recurring in popular as well as scientific discourses on environmental issues (for example, Diamond 2005; McDaniel & Gowdy 2000; Redman 1999).
