Abstract

The sustained population increase in Easter Island or Rapa Nui has been a significant concern for the local community since a discussion has started about the impact it generates in the territory, which raises the need to establish measures of management to ensure its sustainability of it. To this end, a bill has been developed that seeks to regulate the permanence, residence and transfer to the territory, as well as to promote a technical instrument that allows calculating the carrying capacity of the island, in order to take a series of measures from overcoming their thresholds. The said instrument will be in charge of Urban Plans and Projects of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, through an applied research project, of which this thesis is part of, from deepening in a less explored within the traditional methodologies to measure the carrying capacity, that is, the sociocultural dimension. Thus, this document focuses on proposing a methodology to measure the Sociocultural Carrying Capacity of Rapa Nui, to monitor the impact that is generated from the phenomena brought about by the increase in population (resident and tourist) not belonging to the local ethnic group, with the ultimate goal of providing a tool capable of guiding a management model with a livelihood in preserving or safeguarding local identity, heritage and social coexistence in the insular territory.