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Bali: Island paradise sucked dry by tourists

Sydney Morning Herald Post 4 Oct 08;

"Six years ago you could paddle out at Nusa Dua and see beautiful tropical fish darting back and forth. Now you see plastic bags … This is the third bomb coming to Bali, an environmental bomb."

FROM the crowded bar of the Bounty Club, where bare-chested Australian youngsters mount the stage and drunkenly bellow karaoke, to the luxury Luna 2 villa where the glitterati sip French champagne on the Legian foreshore, Bali is booming again.

The fall in tourist numbers that followed two sets of Bali bombings are a distant memory. Tourist numbers rose to a new high this year, with a record 33,000 Australians arriving in July alone. Visitors walking the 10-kilometre beachfront strip from Kuta to Seminyak any day in the past three months would not have been able to find a single vacant room.

Across the island, a multitude of new hotels and villas are being built. Bagus Sudibya, of Bali's Tourism Board, says the island now hosts 60,000 tourist rooms, compared with 40,000 three years ago. He predicts that this year there will be more than 2 million visitors for the first time.

In Bali's bars, beaches and shops, locals welcome the revitalisation of the tourism trade that provides the island with 80 per cent of its income. But the newly-elected Governor, the softly spoken former police chief known to Australians for capturing the Bali bombers, I Made Mangku Pastika, is watching the influx with alarm.

He sees another time bomb ticking, an environmental catastrophe set to overwhelm the holiday paradise. Development is denuding Bali's forests and literally sucking the island dry, Governor Pastika warns.

"We are very concerned about the environmental problems in Bali because our forests now are only 22 per cent of the whole area in Bali - according to our laws there should be at least 30 per cent - and of this 22 per cent, only 59 per cent is in good condition and can function as a real forest."

Demand for wood was three-times what legal logging could supply, eating into the remaining forest, Pastika says. "The next problem this creates is water. Now from 400 rivers there are 260 dry. We have 140 left, but they are in the process of drying."

Bali's environmental balance is under threat, he says.

"Water levels are decreasing, people are exploiting water, taking deep water, there is a massive exploitation of our underground water by hotels and big companies like Coca Cola. The process of drying is destroying our environment."

The level of vehicles, waste and sanitation is also critical, Pastika says, and it is exacerbated by the rampant pace of tourism development.

"People want to come to Bali to enjoy the paradise. Paradise means good weather, good environment, good food, good beaches, good rivers. But, frankly speaking, I am worried if we cannot slow down this rapid and massive destruction."

For years Bali aficionados have warned that tourism could overwhelm both the island and its culture, but Pastika believes the tipping point is at hand, and he is not alone.

In his sprawling villa complex cascading down a luscious green gorge on Ubud's outskirts - its tranquil beauty has housed Mick Jagger and Kylie Minogue - sits the renowned local designer Amir Rabik.

"Everybody sees the danger but no one is doing anything about it," Rabik says.

Bali needs clean water, better infrastructure, waste management and an enforceable building code, he says, and "the great danger is developers, now many international developers are here".

Bali's philosophical environment also needs protection, he says.

"It's not Hindu, Buddhist or animist, but combined beliefs respecting God, harmony and nature. If respect for God, nature and harmony disappear, then Bali is gone, it's worse than a bomb."

Walhi is Indonesia's foremost environmental watchdog, and Agung Wardana heads its Bali chapter. He is dismayed at the climbing number of resorts, with even "ecological" villas eating into what is left of the island's forests. Hotels are spreading to less developed areas, siphoning off water, Wardana says.

"Local people now have to suffer more because the huge water consumption for each hotel room is 30 times the water consumption of one individual. The Government should prioritise their community first."

In central Bali's Karangasem, water is now so scarce villagers have to travel four kilometres along dusty roads to buy containers of the vital liquid.

Across the island entrepreneurs are placing profit ahead of the environment, typified by the beach once known as Dreamland, a near-mythical surf break nestled at the base of the Bukit Peninsula.

Dreamland was just a few kilometres from Kuta's bustle, but protected by relative inaccessibility. After trekking across fields and down a cliff, you could watch the rolling waves, snacking on fried rice and fish from rickety warungs, or beachside shacks. A few years ago the son of the former president Soeharto, Tommy, used gangsters to help push locals aside and buy up the area. After he was jailed for ordering the murder of a Supreme Court judge, the land was sold off to other developers, who have carved a road down through the cliffs. They are building a huge hotel on the beachfront, have bulldozed the warungs and built a massive concrete walkway lined by box-like concrete shops, renaming the area the "new Kuta".

Watching the waves as construction continues, several young locals who hire out surfboards try to attract custom, shaking their heads at the vista behind them. "The wave is the same," says Miki, who has welcomed surfers here for eight years. "The beach might be different, but the wave stay the same, so no problem, just come."

His optimism is skin deep. "The rich get richer, the poor get poorer," Miki continues.

"My income dropped almost 30-40 per cent compared to before the building started. We were never told that this is what they were going to do."

He gestures to the construction. "I don't think it's allowed, but I guess they use some trick to get the permit. The Government should have never issued the permit. It doesn't look pretty. It's damaging the beach."

All around the Bukit Peninsula developers are carving into hills and cliffs, eager to market luxury villas with ocean views to international, often Australian, investors. Exclusive five-star resorts, such as Bulgari Hotel, charging $1500 a night for a cliff-top villa, are spreading.

On this deeply spiritual island the one area sacrosanct from development was land surrounding significant Hindu temples, usually on hilltops. But on the Bukit Peninsula the hunger for prime real estate has seen these regulations violated.

Locals are protesting over the construction of villas around the Uluwatu Temple. Pastika concedes the developments are illegal, demonstrating the need for new, enforceable land use laws.

"The bylaw declares it a no development zone; however, the reality in the field is quite different. There have been many buildings developed inside those perimeters. We should take this reality into consideration since locals also need jobs."

The old-time Australian surfer Mike O'Leary found business success as a jewellery designer, setting up a Bali factory employing 150 local staff. Relocated to Bali, he is advising a top-end architectural and construction firm. "I know of about 5000 villas going into the Bukit over the next two years," O'Leary says, "Five hundred at Dreamland alone.

"It's all self-regulated; no one is going to tell you where to put your sewerage. You want to build, you just pay your money and you can build anything you want."

O'Leary, still an avid surfer, is dismayed by the state of the once-pristine ocean. Hotel sewage often flows out into the tourist beaches of Kuta and Legian.

"Six years ago you could paddle out at Nusa Dua and see beautiful tropical fish darting back and forth. Now you see plastic bags … This is the third bomb coming to Bali, an environmental bomb."

O'Leary decided to play his part in rescuing paradise, establishing the ROLE foundation, an ecologically oriented charity aimed at maritime conservation and providing business skills to help locals establish environmentally friendly businesses.

He has built an abalone farm, using the shells for jewellery to halt them being robbed from the sea bed. A protected marine area is being set up off Nusa Dua, and evening classes teaching business and computer skills are packed with struggling local women.

Pastika proposes radical solutions. "First is to regulate the exploitation of our underground water," he says. "Especially from big investors who take a lot of water … Second is to take responsibility to rebuild the forests, and give people who are living around the forests good livelihoods, so they can live properly."

Pastika plans a moratorium on new developments in already-crowded areas. Bali's culture must also be protected, he adds.

"The philosophy of our island is 'Tri Hita Karana', the balance and harmony between man, the environment, and between man and our God. These three things cause happiness.

"If we damage the environment everything is damaged, because this environment came from God. It belongs to the people."