ismawati

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“When public services fail to serve all populations equally, if people get more trust and empowerment, most of the problems can be solved closer to the source in a more sustainable way with less costs than the conventional and centralized approach.”  — Yuyun Ismawati, Indonesia, Sustainable Development

Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east. It is one of the country’s 33 provinces with the provincial capital at Denpasar towards the south of the island. With a population recorded as 3,551,000 in 2009, the island is home to the vast majority of Indonesia’s small Hindu minority. About 93.2% of Bali’s population adheres to Balinese Hinduism, while most of the remainder follow Islam. It is also the largest tourist destination in the country and is renowned for its highly developed arts, including dance, sculpture, painting, leather, metalworking, and music. Read > HERE <

Tourism in Bali – The island of Bali, Indonesia, always has been an enchanting place for foreigners. Images of rice paddies, beautiful beaches and temples and a fascinating culture draw tourists from all around the world. It was only in the 1970s that tourism in Bali started to develop. The industry did bring many benefits to the island, such as increased employment, and its transformation from a marginal economic area of the country to the most important area in Indonesia after Jakarta. However, Bali s tourism development occurred quickly and without proper planning.

Therefore, tourism has caused some serious damage to the island’s environment. As one example, the sleepy village of Kuta became a tourist enclave, with its natural resources degraded and its infrastructure overwhelmed. This paper will discuss the origins of tourism in Bali and how it has affected the island’s environment. It also will discuss proposed alternatives to let tourism and the environment coexist in a more balanced fashion.

Description – Mass tourism in Bali began in 1969 with the construction of the new Ngurah Rai International Airport, allowing foreign flights directly into the island, rather than arrival via Jakarta. Three years later, in 1972, the Master Plan for the Development of Tourism in Bali was drawn by the government of Indonesia. The government wanted to make Bali the „showcase“ of Indonesia and to serve as the model of future tourism development for the rest of the country. The plan was financed by the United Nations Development Programme and carried out by the World Bank.

A Solution to Stop Garbage Destroying Tourism – Tourism took off on the island in the 1970s. The economic benefits are clear: the island went from being economically marginal to ranking second only to the country’s capital, Jakarta, in wealth creation. The island received more than 2.38 million tourists in 2009, up 14.5 percent compared with 2008, according to Ida Komang Wisnu, head of the provincial statistics office. But tourism produces on average five kilograms of waste a day per tourist – 10 times what the average Indonesian produces (Bali Fokus).

In the past, the traditional way of serving food in Indonesia was to wrap it in, or serve it on, a palm leaf: a biodegradable approach. But with the huge expansion in use of plastics and non-biodegradable packaging, the waste disposal problem is out of control.

In Indonesia, government garbage disposal services tend to collect between 30 and 40 percent of solid waste, most of this from high income communities. The majority poor population are left to fend for themselves when it comes to waste disposal.

A solution by Yuyun Ismawati, an environmental engineer and consultant, has since 1996 focused on helping poor communities find ways to safely dispose of waste.

Yuyun Ismawati is an Indonesian environment engineer. She has worked on design of city and rural water supply systems, and later on designing systems for safe waste management.

In 2000, she started her own NGO – Bali Fokus – and opened a waste management facility in the Bali village of Temesi. The recycling plant employs 40 people from the village, who sort garbage into recyclables, compost and residual waste. Income from the recycled waste and compost goes to helping local farmers.

Bali Fokus’ successful approach has now been replicated in six other sites on the nearby island of Java. And the government of Indonesia has promised to help create 15 more each year.

In 2009 Ismawati won the Goldman Award which honors grassroots environmental heroes from the six inhabited continental regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America.

She is also working on using decentralized grassroots approaches to bringing sewage disposal and clean water to communities.

ALL IS NOT WELL – Environmentalists and some government officials say the problems could become worse unless significant investment is made and people started conserving water.

„If there’s no change in this fast-growing tourism development, it’s not impossible that Bali will suffer from a water crisis in the next 10 years,“ said Agung Wardana from Wahli, a leading Indonesian environment group.

„The current emphasis is the development of the tourism industry which results in changes in productive and open lands that reduce the ability to provide ground water. This is made worse by neglect of river system,“ he added.

Many Balinese rely on wells for water but in some areas, particularly in the tourist centre of Kuta, so much is being extracted that salt water is fouling supplies. Rubbish and sewage being dumped into rivers was also affecting water quality.

Bali has few reservoirs and many of its rivers are used to channel water to an intricate traditional network of channels to feed the island’s iconic emerald rice fields.

playa-basura

85% of Balis freshwater tapped or not clean, most freshwater urged by tourism

„Since the development of tourism industry is very fast, in the future we will have a big problem,“ said Ida Cakra Sudarsana, head of the mining and energy division in the Bali Department of Public Works.

He said Bali’s problems were not lack of ground or river water but one of development and he urged an expansion of reservoirs and tree-planting schemes in Bali’s volcanic mountains to curb deforestation and water-conservation schemes.

„We’re supposed not to face a water shortage until at least 2025,“ said Raka Dalem, a senior lecturer in environmental management and ecotourism at Bali’s Udayana University. „But in actual situation we do face a shortage situation because of bad management of water resources.

„During the wet season, lots of water flows to the sea and then in the dry season we face a bad problem. That’s the main issue, how we manage the water so that it can be used throughout the year,“ he said.

While tourist businesses and farmers diverting water from Bali’s lakes were partly to blame, there was also significant damage caused by the felling of forest trees near catchment areas for cash crop cultivation, experts said.

A lack of trees meant water and silt rushed into the lakes during downpours but there were less regular river flows during the dry season. It also meant that water was not being absorbed into the ground to fill underground basins that will provide for Bali’s water needs in the future. Water conservation is crucial.

Already at Nusa Dua, an enclave of five-star hotels and a major conference centre, the government has banned deep-well water. All big hotels in Nusa Dua used recycled waste water for watering gardens. Many luxury villas also used water-recycling systems, said Nils Wetterlind of ecovilla developer Tropical Homes.

But most villas also have large swimming pools filled from well or town water. And very few villas used solar/natural gas electricity systems now widely available or used certified plantation timber, meaning they weren’t very green.

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