Bali Tourism News

The bounty of Bali abused

October 6th, 2008

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 around a pool inlaid with a 20-metre Marilyn Monroe mosaic, Bali is booming again.

A tourist influx has replaced the downturns that followed the two Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005. Total numbers swelled to new highs this year, and 33,000 Australians came in July alone, a record. Visitors walking the 10-kilometre beachfront strip from Kuta to Seminyak any day in the past three months could not find a single available room.
Across the island, a multitude of new hotels and villas are under construction. Bagus Sudibya, from Bali’s Tourism Board, says the island hosts 60,000 tourist rooms, up from 40,000 just three years ago.

He predicts that this year visitor numbers will top more than 2 million for the first time.

In Bali’s bars, beaches and shops, locals welcome the revitalisation of the tourism trade, which provides the island with 80% of its income, but newly elected Governor I Made Mangku Pastika, the softly spoken former police chief known to Australians for capturing the Bali bombers, 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, Pastika warns.

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

Demand for wood was three times what legal logging could supply, so that even young trees are cut down, 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. “First we have to talk about the environment; that is the most important thing. This is the relationship of our life. First is water, forests needs water, water needs forests. Water is the source of life.

“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.”

Source: http://www.theage.com.au

Entry Filed under: Bali Tourism News