Mass tourism is destroying Bali ecosystem

[Elena, 25 Italy 29 March 2017 at 16:46 Post count: 0]

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Bali Island, Indonesia, is one of the most famous tourism destination in the World.

However, many problems in Bali have been caused by unplanned construction of Resorts, Hotels and other buildinga, as wll as lack of regulations and tourism mismanagemement. The intensive construction  has caused several environmental problems.

First of all in coastal fringes, a primary attraction for tourists, water quality issues have emerged in recent years. Due to the uncontrolled building along coasts and consequently, the discharging of untreated effluent into the sea, coral reefs have been degraded or destroyed causing irreversible damages to the environment. Environmental degradation is the negative externalization that have been mainly originated by uncontrolled development of tourism during the years, and represents a hard challenge for local and International policies, which aim to preserve Bali’s image.

Besides, along the coast and in countryside, some Resort, Hotels and restaurants have been planned and built also without careful regard for the management of water supply and waste disposal capacity. In particular, water management is a critical point because it has been recognized as one of the scarcest resources for the tourism industry (UNWTO, 2003). However, climate change will increase the pressures and finding a way to manage water resources is necessary in order to contrast the conflict between tourism industry and local population. In fact, due to the constantly growing of tourism industry, local communities are suffering the lack of water in essential activities such as farming.

Despite International and local laws protect the integrity of heritage sites, some touristic and commercial buildings, not conformed to regulations, has been established in some protected areas damaging the cultural landscape in UNESCO site. For instance, several villas in deeply-touristificated areas, such as Canggu and Kuta, are not registered in government’s offices, even though these places have been full of traditional rice fields in a recent past. These phenomena are mainly caused by government corruption. In fact, although building in some area is not only forbidden by customary religious law, but by official law too, parts of private entrepreneurship have not found any interruption. Deforestation, coastal overbuilding, deviation of rivers, constructions on forbidden land  are however very common in Bali.

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