Anak Agung Gede Agung: "Calamity" of Overdevelopment in Bali

Striking glimpses of the effects of rapid, often unregulated over-development in Asia occasionally show up in our news streams in the States, like China's recent 100 km-long traffic jams, lasting, in some cases, weeks.
But what is happening to the tiny "paradise island" of Bali is particularly poignant and distressing, a focused   microcosm in which these forces are overwhelming a tiny island's ancient and venerable culture. Tourism is still increasing, now with many from China (PRC). Lately we've heard of a rabies epidemic (93 people dead, 110,000 dogs killed), a dengue fever epidemic (2771 cases in the first three months of 2010), deadly gangsterism,  and murders of tourists by migrant laborers. But these are only the most dramatic symptoms, below which lie a raft of problems brought about by the exploitation of Bali's people and culture for industrial-scale tourism, in the process creating a wild west of unregulated speculative development.

Here is Anak Agung Gede Agung, a member of the Gianyar royal family, former Indonesian Minister of Societal Affairs, a graduate of Harvard and Leiden University in Holland and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, writing for the Jakarta Post Sept 6:
Bali last year had 5.75 million foreign and domestic tourists, which is almost twice the island's population of 3.9 million (the ideal population based on the environmental support capacity is 1.5 million).


"All of Bali's 48 beaches have undergone acute erosion, so much so that its coastline has lost 181.7 kilometers of land this last decade, which amounts to 41.5 percent of the island's total shoreline. In one year alone, in 2008, the satellite data showed that Bali lost 88.6 kilometers of its beaches, caused mainly by massive disregard of zoning and coastline laws.


"This last decade, the average temperature in Bali rose from 28 to 30 degrees Celsius to 33. This is caused mostly by an increase in population density.


"The number of hotel rooms, excluding those in the fast mushrooming villa complexes, has shot up to 78,000 while the optimum number is 22,000, as indicated by the survey commissioned by the government.


"A hotel room consumes on average 300 liters of water per day. With 78,000 rooms, this amounts to at least 23,400,000 liters of precious water used daily by the tourist industry.


"The result is a massive shortage of water in various parts of Bali and acute seepage of seawater penetrating inland, with sea levels rising by 50 centimeters in most coastal areas in Bali.


"Massive illegal logging is occurring in the forests of West Bali, endangering the island's few national parks. Since 1983, Bali has lost 25,000 hectares of its forest, indicating a drastic reduction of one fifth of its forest reserves within a 20-year period.


"Around-the-clock traffic jams are now an everyday phenomena in most parts of Bali, especially throughout the regencies of Badung, Gianyar, Tabanan, Buleleng and the major highway around the whole of the island.


"Bali has lost on average 1,500 hectares of lush agricultural land per year to the tourist industry over the past 30 years. Considering Bali's small land mass, this is an enormous alienation shift.


"In its place comes a hotel, mall or restaurant that every day exudes an alien way of life, fast replacing the indigenous culture.


"While the biodiversity erosions are caused by an overuse of natural resources due to an influx of tourists and changes in lifestyle are severe enough, the cultural erosion caused by the land alienation are more critical as they lead to the rapid extinction of the Balinese custom, tradition and identity.


"Why has such a calamity befallen Bali? The answer lies in the government, both at the central and provincial levels, together with the tourist industry's over-focus on Bali . . ."

 -Anak Agung Gede Agung