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Ida Bagus Ngurah Wijaya: Balancing the impact of tourism

The Bali that Ida Bagus Ngurah Wijaya was born into is, almost six decades on, a very different island

Trisha Sertori (The Jakarta Post)
Denpasar
Thu, May 27, 2010

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Ida Bagus Ngurah Wijaya: Balancing the impact of tourism

The Bali that Ida Bagus Ngurah Wijaya was born into is, almost six decades on, a very different island.

JP/J.B. Djwan
At that time the coming tourist boom was barely a glint in an entrepreneur’s eye and to Wijaya as a small boy, his island was a playground of azure seas, vivid green rice fields terraced across the horizon, dragon flies skipping on the wing, frog orchestras playing in time with chanting priests and gamelan against an endless backdrop of swaying lines of women bearing luminescent offerings to the Gods. This is the Bali Wijaya wants to share with the world.

As twice-elected chairman of the Bali Tourism Board (BTB), Wijaya says today Bali straddles a razors edge of culture, the natural world and religion slipping away on one side; the very keystones of Bali’s constantly expanding tourism, versus a potential rising disaster in resource management planning, coupled with environment and cultural loss as a direct result of that tourism.

Wijaya explains that the BTB was developed a decade ago to try and balance the impact of tourism and ensure that it was based on the precepts of Hinduism, Tri Hita Karana, culture, the natural world and the Gods, but attempting to achieve that balance, Wijaya says, demands the government and people to look to the future if they want to create a sustainable industry.

“BTB started because Bali mainly depends on tourism and we have no other resources except the people themselves. Bali is famous within the [international] travel industry; its way of life, culture and the local economy depends on this. Almost 80 percent — if not 100 percent — of people depend on tourism.

“This includes rice farmers… Rice farming is still the backbone of Bali’s tourism,” explains Wijaya of the significant value of Bali’s agricultural landscape to visitors and hence its need for protection.

And this is just one area where he believes long-term planning and public awareness of that planning is critical. “A lot of people complain, especially investors. They have a piece of land but they can’t build on it because it is within the Green Belt, so the Government needs to make people aware of this [regulation] first, not after the land is sold,” says Wijaya.

He adds there are also planning problems associated with water resources, sewerage run off and electricity supply and conflicts between regional and provincial planning regulations.

“People want to know whether they can or can not build, but between the provincial and regional governments there is no synchronization on planning, we need certainty of regulations so we can make decisions. Business and life are about planning,” says Wijaya.

He points to Bali’s big five threats into the near future; electricity, water, traffic, garbage and illegal taxes, and says some of these issues have been on the table for a very long time, yet successive provincial governments have yet to inform the public of Bali’s direction.

“On electricity, there are, I understand, around 50,000 people waiting for electricity supply. Electricity use is going up — we are part of a modern society — a modern society needs power… Now people have fans, air conditioning and the government should provide for this — that’s why people pay taxes,” says Wijaya pointing to Bali’s long proposed geothermal electricity plant that was stalled as a result of public concerns.

Those fears, says Wijaya, should have been addressed years ago through awareness and education programs.  “Most of the structural projects suggested for Bali are refused by the local people, maybe because they don’t understand and it is the role of government to socialize issues such as geothermal electricity that offers clean energy,” says Wijaya.

On water security and river protection, Wijaya points out that damming of rivers before they empty into the sea would allow for a constant water supply and the opportunity to collect garbage before it entered the seas.

“Dams would offer water for irrigation, for homes and would also care for the environment by removing rubbish before it goes out to sea. Currently there are 2.2  million local people and around four million visitors every year dumping rubbish into the rivers; that’s a lot of rubbish,” says Wijaya.

The problem, Wijaya goes on, is that despite regencies discussing damming rivers and using the water for industry and the public over the last 10 years, nothing has been done until now.

However some government initiatives to conserve Bali’s underground water supplies by slapping a 1,000 percent tax on ground water in some areas was a positive step in water conservation planning says Wijaya.

“But I think this is all up to the government. Governments issue building permits so they need to ask where are you going to get water? This needs to be asked before planning permits are issued, but governments appear to only be looking for income, not regulating the system,” Wijaya pragmatically points out.

And again, the public’s lack of information and knowledge on these issues has long been a stumbling block in protecting Bali’s environment on several fronts, including sewerage.

“Even beach recovery programs were refused by the people — now everyone wants beach recovery projects. But a decade ago the problem was much smaller, so the government needs to inform people about issues and solutions,” says Wijaya.

That lack of public education put at risk Denpasar and Kuta’s desperately needed sewerage system that is now well underway. “The government is now putting sewerage through Denpasar and Kuta, but the people had refused that as well,” explains Wijaya.

So the issues facing Bali into the future are not just those of environmental damage through poor planning, waste management issues, water and electricity security, but also of the will to recognize and address issues head on and inform the public of why changes need to be made if the Bali that currently offers income from tourism is to survive.

“Bali’s government now realizes this. In February 2010 the governor, Made Mangku Pastika, said he wanted Bali to be a green destination… If we don’t address the five elements [of cultural and environmental damage], people won’t come to Indonesia and won’t want to invest here — all the promotion would be worthless,” says Wijaya who in his own small way is working to restore the Bali of his childhood by banning all chemicals at his Sanur hotel.

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