Balinese collect garbage at the ever-popular Kuta Beach. Picture: AFP Source: AFP
ON Bali's first sunny day after months of wet season, about 1000 beach vendors were scooping rubbish on Kuta's famous beach. Patrols of garbage collection officers driving along the sand yelled from loud speakers for other hawkers to pitch in.
Since the resort island's recent bad rap in a US magazine, dubbing it a risk for "holidays in hell", the reverberations have gone viral. Authorities concur that rising crime, rubbish, pollution, traffic bottlenecks, shoddy infrastructure and overdevelopment are problems. But beach rubbish is the easily achievable priority.
There's nothing like politicians under pressure to get things moving. The beach looked almost pristine as clean-up crews waited for a nod of approval from visiting Indonesian Tourism and Culture Minister Jero Wacik. When Indonesia's tourism jewel is under threat, communications run like clockwork.
Wacik is anticipating the 4500 daily foreign tourist arrivals, sometimes swelling to 7000, to boost Indonesia's tourism profits to $US8.5 billion this year, an 11.8 per cent increase over last. "I am optimistic this year's target can be achieved," he said recently.
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Bali generates 30 per cent of national tourist revenue, an estimated $US3.5bn a year. However, about 60 per cent of tourist income leaves the island, according to Bagus Sudibya, a senior member of the Bali Tourism Board, the industry body, and a local travel agency leader.
But how can the modest island of Bali, about half the size of greater Sydney, sustain another forecast massive tourist and development surge, mostly consigned to its south?
Government and industry officials have been warning for years that rampant development eventually will erupt into environmental disaster. But now the defining underlying deficiencies of planning in the island province -- lack of regulation, weak law enforcement and corruption -- are subjecting tourists to obnoxious effects.
As well, a security alert warning Australian travellers -- still Bali's greatest supporters -- of "the very high threat of terrorist attack" after the foiling of a Good Friday bomb plot in Jakarta, may also put a dampener on tourist influxes. Although the strong Aussie dollar perhaps has more pull and visitor numbers are strong. Bali has bounced back from the horrific 2002 and 2005 Bali terrorist attacks in which scores of Australians were killed.
Australian arrivals, making up a quarter of foreign visitors, jumped 28 per cent to 156,000 in the first three months of this year, compared with the corresponding period last year. Overall, foreign arrivals rose 10 per cent. If sustained, the island will host a record 2.7 million touriststhis year. Japan, which has declined dramatically as a source, ranks second after Australia, followed by China.
Yet if Bali is to retain its mantle as a top global tourist destination it needs to clean up its act quickly and enforce planning regulations, officials say.
"It's urgent," says the head of the Bali Tourism Board, Ngurah Wijaya, welcoming the critical media spotlight he hopes may unlock a political stalemate impeding development regulations.
"(The Time magazine article) was good [as a warning]. We have been complaining to the government for four years about the lack of infrastructure and over-issuing of hotel licences," he says. "The problem comes from the mayors [regency heads, of which there are eight] issuing the building licences."
Though Bali's Governor, Made Mangku Pastika, has issued a moratorium on hotel construction and new licences in tourism areas, mainly in the southern tourist hub, local mayors are fighting to retain the revenue drip.
The cost of development is seen in traffic congestion and hazardous roads on which an estimated 2.4 million vehicles vie for space, paralysing access and causing frequent accidents. There is a sense of trepidation in the lead up to the annual July-August tourist rush, with business owners questioning how the place will function.
Jason Childs, an Australian expatriate photographer and surfer who has lived on Bali for 18 years with his family, says the lure of the island, with its surf, small-town vibe and Balinese culture, is fading as its natural beauty diminishes.
"As a photographer it's one of the most amazing places to live in the world. But I didn't come to live in a city and all the other problems that come with it," says Childs. "The pace slowed after the [terrorist] bombings, but it has accelerated since 2005 at a pace nobody could have planned for. The sad thing is there's a lot of talk, but there's no action at the moment, and it's a scary thing. For the amount of development that's going on . . . there's no infrastructure being put in," he says. Roads, sewerage and rubbish collection are in need of urgent attention.
"A standard half-hour trip can take three hours now," he says.
How long does he believe it will be before tourists have had enough? "It's already happening," says Childs. "We have Australian friends who are regulars saying 'We don't want to come back.' The surf, the traffic, the whole deal, it's getting too crowded. People are becoming prisoners in their hotels or villas because they prefer not to venture into the traffic chaos. If it's not urgent, you don't go out. Or you walk. You can still have a great holiday, but with less of a Balinese [cultural] experience."
Sitting on Kuta beach with friends, West Australian tourist Melanie Reynolds describes a two-hour evening taxi trip from one part of Kuta's hub to another, usually a 10-minute walk or five on a motor bike. She and her friends have stopped taking taxis, preferring a drenching in tropical downpours to sitting in traffic jams.
"We go on bikes or walk. I won't sit in a taxi for two hours. The weather has been so bad, but I don't care if I get wet. A lot of tourists have ended up with motorbikes, but it's dangerous," she says citing heavily potholed roads. Residents and expats compare the snarling mass of congested motorbikes, cars and trucks to Jakarta's crippled queues. The difference is Bali is a small island.
In theory, there are moves to make Bali more amenable again, but a whole vision is lacking. There are plans to build a 560km rail system around Bali by 2014 and a road underpass all the way from Kuta to the hotel enclave of Nusa Dua in the south, although neither has been started. A toll road linking the airport to Nusa Dua is due to be finished in time for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in 2013. A $US210m revamp for the dilapidated Ngurah Rai international airport is scheduled for completion in 2013, but it may add to overcrowding woes.
"Nothing much has been done about the traffic problems," says environmental advocate Wayan Suardana, who is a participant in devising the urban masterplan under protracted discussion.
Suardana is also chairman of the Indonesia Environment Forum (known as Walhi) in Bali. He says "no matter how many new roads are build, they will not be sufficient unless the government develops adequate and easily accessible public transport".
Undoubtedly, the provision of a comprehensive public transport system, not more roads, is the solution, agrees Gusti Ayu Made Suartika, a lecturer in architecture, urban planning and development at Udayana University in Bali. "If high-density tourism is to be sustained the government must establish subsidised public transport and control the number of vehicles on the roads. But there is no incentive," Suartika says.
"The government doesn't regulate the numbers of vehicles and ownership because it's a source of revenue . . . every vehicle [owner] pays tax and registration," she says. "That's an income for the government. If the government puts a stop on cars, where are we going to get next year's budget?"
Road users would also oppose it. The rising middle class of Balinese enjoys its wealth and would be reluctant to swap cars for public transport. Nor would the ubiquitous motor scooter owners be happy to abandon their cheap but high-polluting modes of transport.
Citing the tourism imperative, Suartika, who is also a researcher at the University of NSW, says Bali "needs a sustainable blueprint and, at the end of the day, money will solve everything. It will save our environment and our culture. When the environment is not there to support the culture, where is the revenue?"
She describes the complexity, which includes Bali's cultural beliefs and sanctity of land to the Balinese, in her 2009 book, Morphing Bali: The State, Planning and Culture. Arguing for culturally sensitive urban planning, she writes: "Combined with corrupt practices, preferential treatment to elites and monopolistic intervention, it is clear that a modern planning system is barely present."
The Balinese have had regional autonomy since 2001, but outside money drives development. Ngurah Karyadi, a member of Walhi and founder of Bali's Legal Aid Institute, fears more business investment from Jakarta will precipitate a "recolonisation of Bali". Research shows investment, particularly for big projects, is dominated by wealthy investors from Jakarta and Surabaya in Java.
At Bali's southern surfers' paradise of Bukit, a 400ha project, the Bali Pecatu Indah Resort, is being developed by controversial figure Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra, the youngest son of former president Suharto. Tommy, as he is generally known, is said to be the face behind the fledging National Republic Party that was registered at the end of April in Jakarta. He served four years of a 15-year jail sentence for funding the murder of a judge who convicted him of graft before being released in 2006. His huge project will include five-star hotels, a golf course, schools, hospitals and a desalination water plant.
Another big development is the Anantara Resort Uluwatu, built into a cliff facing Impossible Beach, a favourite surfing hangout. Bukit, a dry, clifftop region renowned for its wild surf and international competitions, has until now had little investor interest, mainly due to a lack of fresh water.
"One or two decades ago, no one was interested in that area because of bad infrastructure, no water, nothing to plant there," says Michael Gunawan, manager of Ray White Kuta, Bali, the marketing agent for one of the hotels planned for the site.
"But now it has almost become the future Beverly Hills of Bali . . . a real, fully integrated tourism resort. It's also creating employment and providing infrastructure," he says, reflecting the pro-development sentiment of many locals in the tourism sector.
The governor's objective is to place future tourism development away from the south -- including from Bukit -- so as to lessen environmental effects and create alternative tourism hubs, but this may prove arduous. As part of the decentralisation aim, there are plans for a new international airport for Singaraja in the north, and new facilities in the east, linking to other islands. However, Bahal Edison Naiborhu, director for spatial land management at the Public Works Ministry in Jakarta, while supportive, acknowledges that investment in remote areas is unattractive.
One of a growing band of development dissenters, Bayu Susila, from an environmental and urban development non-government organisation called Balifokus, says: "I want my government to develop other regions [in Indonesia] and stop developing Bali. It's enough. The problem is Bali is a captive market for tourism and investors are not confident they will make good returns elsewhere."
Says Edison, who represents the central government in Bali's planning meetings: "The main obstacles to getting things done are poor co-ordination, lack of infrastructure, lack of co-operation from local government, mostly sectoral development, ineffective development control and law enforcement and corruption."
Under regulations, 30 per cent of land is zoned green, but laws are increasingly flouted as locals sell coveted rice paddies at escalating profits. Though a bylaw regulates development of tourism facilities near temples, on cliffs and coastlines, it is little deterrent.
Childs calls the Bali boom "rape and pillaging" by Western speculators, but many people have their fingers in the pie. From Kuta to Seminyak, even in tiny gangs (laneways), frenetic construction noise lasts deep into evening and narrow roads are choked by lumbering concrete mixers, cranes, trucks, cars and plagues of motor bikes.
Bizarrely, about half a dozen cranes overhang the foreshores of Kuta beach, spitting dust and noise where tourists sunbake and swim. On a 5.2ha site, a multi-billion-dollar complex developed by a Jakarta company incorporating hotels, restaurants and retail is underway. Carparks will accommodate 1000 cars, but getting to the heart of Kuta's beach may be problematic. As Childs says, what's the point of building new hotels if you can't get to them?
Last year's census shows, minus tourists and migrants, that Bali's population swelled to 3.9m , up 20 per cent in a decade and far exceeding a supposed ideal of 2.5m people.
Foreign arrivals, at 2.5m a year, are additional along with the growing domestic tourist market at about five million visitors a year.
Bali's Statistics Office estimates that there are roughly 400,000 unregistered internal migrants in Bali, mainly from east Java and Lombok, but authentic figures are unknown.
Many, drawn to the promise of regular construction work, for which the wages are unacceptably low to the Balinese, rarely return to their original homes. Rather, they invite their relatives to join them.
"Usually they are people with no education, they cannot fund a living . . . they steal . . . these are things that decrease the security of the place," Suartika says.
Concern that domestic immigrants are swamping the island, contributing to a rising crime rate in which foreigners are frequent victims, is a common complaint. The immigrants "threaten the safety and comfort of the island", bemoans Wacik.
When Bayu Susila from Balifokus asked Governor Pastika to find a way of bringing in internal migrant working visas, Susila recalls Pastika replied: "We can't do that, we are a unity."
Susila is concerned Muslim migrants are buying land and building small enclaves for relatives that exclude the Balinese and erode the island's unique Hindu culture. "Most are moderate Muslims, but a few may swing to the Right," he says.
In Morphing Bali, Suartika writes: "Uncontrolled numbers of internal migrants invading Bali for the last two decades and their resistance to blend with local ways of life has also added to the list of endangering impacts that Bali has to bear."
Politics is fickle and at the beginning of April Pastika said he would waive his own ban to allow the construction of a convention centre and hotel complex on 250ha to host the 2013 APEC meeting in Jimbaran, in the south near Kuta. The land's green zoning will be changed to allow the development despite the fact the area already has many five-star hotels and conference facilities.
"This is in the framework of projecting a good image for Indonesia, especially Bali," he was quoted as saying in The Jakarta Globe. "Especially for that [project], the government will review its moratorium on new hotels in southern Bali which was issued in January."
Numerous requests by Inquirer to interview Pastika were declined.
Hotels are not the only culprits in the development war. Illegal villas without building permits have mushroomed, many occupying soughtafter rice fields.
Says the vice-chairman of the Bali Tourism Board, Bagus Sudibya: "According to statistics there are more than 700 illegal villas, with over 10,000 people, mostly foreigners, not calculated to be using the infrastructure."
Beneath that layer, says Bali litigation lawyer Simon Trombine, is a bevy of unscrupulous foreigners fraudulently selling villas to gullible compatriots who believe it's safer to buy from a Westerner, and they can own the land themselves instead of leasing it or buying it through an Indonesian nominee whose name goes on the title.
Foreigners are ineligible to own Indonesian land and, by the time they realise, it's too late: they've been fleeced, plus they now own an illegal villa.
IN a pocket of Bali's Kerobokan, a traditional Javanese warung (restaurant) has retained a feel from the past. Facing rolling emerald rice paddies, the sensation is one of eating within a picture postcard. Recently, the Balinese owner saw people measuring one of the rice fields. He shivers: "There's no order here, and it seems like there is no government."
Childs puts it more succinctly : "It's anarchy," he says referring to the consequences of government inaction on development.
Clearly, many are pondering if Bali's halcyon days are numbered. Will the island bow to deleterious forces? Will it kill the proverbial goose?
Childs pauses, then says: "The uniqueness of the people and their culture is what separates Bali from other island holidays. That's its magic and allure. Development is going to happen, but the environment needs to be factored in. It's not too late."
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