Tourism plan for Serangan may have environmental cost
Tourism plan for Serangan may have environmental cost
By Putu Wirata
DENPASAR (JP): Close on the heels of controversies surrounding
giant sculptures and a tourist project in Tanah Lot, development
plans for Serangan Island, a 10-minute motor boat ride from Benoa
port in Bali, have raised another wave of local ire.
Hindu followers had traditionally relied on boats to cross a
kilometer of brackish water before entering the courtyard of the
Sakenan temple for the Kuningan rite on Serangan.
This past Sept. 27, hundreds of residents were astonished to
find they no longer needed the boats -- they also could not see
the open sea in the south as the land had been reclaimed.
The about 600 fishermen and their families who earn their
livelihood around Serangan are now anxious about their future.
"I can no longer go fishing," said Pan Lobeng, 70, one of the
fishermen. Fishermen earn from Rp 10,000 to Rp 25,000 each day
they cast their nets.
The local administration had issued a ban on land-filling
activities but exempted a private company, PT Bali Turtle Island
Development (PT BTID).
The company gained permission to expand Serangan by four times
its original size to up to 500 hectares; the plan last year was
to expand it to 300 hectares.
This will take around 9 million cubic meters of stone.
A five-star hotel, golf course, marina and several other
tourist amenities are planned, and Serangan is expected to be a
tourist resort similar to Nusa Dua.
Local residents have not been asked to move but it is clear
they cannot remain put for good.
"This is structural impoverishment," said Putu Suasta, a
local young entrepreneur and observer of social developments in
Bali.
Although the resort is designed to bring in greater revenue
for the provincial administration, environmentalists also fear
possible damage to its mangrove forest and ensuing erosion. They
claim the forest has helped Serangan withstand erosion for
centuries.
"The development is actually against the findings of a survey
in 1971, which did not recommend Serangan as a tourist resort,"
said architect Nyoman Gelebet, who was part of that survey.
"But the plan is being imposed regardless of the result of
this research, and nature ultimately will have its say."
Revision
Gelebet, a lecturer at the School of Engineering of Udayana
University, was referring to the study by an international
research institute, SCETTO. It recommended 12 tourist areas for
development in Bali, but Serangan was not included because of its
vulnerability to erosion.
In 1981, there was a revision of the spatial layout of Bali
under the Master Spatial Layout Planning Board. Once again,
Serangan was not on the list of sites for tourist development.
A decade later, a survey by Scott and Purfy also concurred
Serangan was not fitting for tourism.
This survey team had reportedly come up against intense
pressure to vouch for Serangan's suitability for tourism, but
members had threatened to resign rather than manipulate results.
Reclamation began anyway, amid protests by activists and
intellectuals.
"This reclamation and the plan to be carried out by BTID will
destroy the cultural system of local people and also that of
Bali," Putu Suasta said.
The atoll houses Pura Sakenan, believed to have been built by
Dang Hyang Nirartha some six centuries ago.
According to a decree (bhisama) from the Indonesian Hindu
Council, construction of other buildings except those related to
temple activities are barred from around pura dang kahyangan,
sacred structures under which Pura Sakenan is classified.
In an earlier case testing this religious edict, the Bakrie
Group had established PT Bali Nirwana Resort to build a huge
resort near the holy Tanah Lot temple.
Bakrie finally revised its spatial layout plan after Bali's
majority Hindu population had been outraged.
"If a violation of this decree occurs again in the case of
Serangan Island, the administration's issuance of the permit will
have gone too far," Putu Suasta said.
BTID has claimed in its defense that it was bettering the lot
of the local people.
"We will not send away local residents of the island, but will
provide them with 30 hectares of land resulting from the
reclamation," director of the company, Hendro Waduyo, said in
Denpasar.
He said the project had provided jobs to 1,400 people.
Assistant manager of PT BTID, I GAN Saputra, insisted the
project was beneficial to the Serangan community.
"Reclamation is in fact intended to save Serangan Island," he
said.
An aerial photograph taken of the island in 1992, he said,
shows that the island was narrow in its center and erosion
occurred at 10 meters per year.
Unless reclamation is conducted, he said, the island could
literally split into two in 10-15 years.
Gelebet countered that Serangan Island and its tourist
facilities could eventually sink, based on results of the earlier
studies.
In the last few months, reclamation has also continued on
Sanur's Mertasari and Padanggalak coasts.
Gelebet said the reclamation had destroyed many sources of
income for Serangan residents.
Environmentalists are most concerned about the mangroves on
the island's west and northern coasts.
They also worry that reclamation will also shift the current
flow to the east, leading to erosion of the Benoa coast.
Hindu institutions and Balinese intellectuals have been
relatively quiet about the controversy. Their silence has been
interpreted in different ways.
"Their unwillingness to speak could mean either puput or
puputan," said Dewa Ngurah Swastha, chairman of Forum of
Indonesian Hindu Observers in Denpasar. Puput means finished, but
puputan means fighting to the end.