ABSTRACT
The story narrates the life of a man who happens to gain personal contact with the indigenous people of Easter Island. When approaching the topic of sustainability, a useful exercise to begin with is showing students an image of Easter Island and its many stones moai. Such an image should be a departure point to inspire them to think about sustainability in a particular context. The mystery of Easter Island, as it has been unravelled by researchers, is a meaningful and threatening tale of how societies can destroy their own future through carelessness and improvidence. Forests were an important source of nutrition for various animals, including cattle. Deforestation therefore all but ended animal fertilisation of crops, devastating natural equilibrium. Once the natural equilibrium was broken, plagues such as the ‘Black Death’ decimated the population of Middle Europe. In response to the crisis, local governments took measures of large-scale reforestation and enacted the first laws based on sustainability. “.
