Tourists yes... but environment first
Tourists yes... but environment first
Dean Yates Reuters Selemadeg Kaja, Bali
Staring at the terraced green rice fields that drop away into the distance, Putu Mahardika ponders how to tap the tourist trade on Indonesia's Bali island without harming his village's pristine environment.
Mahardika says the shimmering fields must not be touched by developers seeking to build hotels in Bali's quiet hinterland, away from the famous Kuta Beach where hordes of tourists and hawkers cram into a thin strip of southern coastline.
"Tourism doesn't have to ruin the environment, and it can also help the life of the villagers here," said Mahardika, chief of Selemadeg Kaja village, located near the center of the island and surrounded by coconut palms, forests and several rivers.
In a small way, Mahardika's dilemma illustrates part of the problem faced by delegates meeting in Bali to prepare for a U.N. summit that aims to cut poverty while saving the environment.
The dilemma delegates face is how to quickly speed development in poor nations without sacrificing the natural beauty found on islands like Bali.
Kuta might be a great job market for Indonesians and offer tourists the ultimate package experience, but to others its endless backpacker hostels and snarled traffic are a turn off. GLOBAL TALKS
Some 6,000 government officials and environmentalists are holding two weeks of talks in Bali ahead of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg next August.
Johannesburg aims to revive the spirit of the landmark Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro 10 years ago, where world leaders reached agreement on balancing the world's economic and social needs with the environment.
Most of the goals adopted at Rio have not been met. After taking a business management course, Mahardika, 39, decided the best approach for Selemadeg Kaja was to get tourists off Bali's beaches and take them trekking along trails that winds through the rice fields and surrounding forests.
The plan is still in the early stages -- although colorful brochures have been printed that portray the type of green, carpeted rice fields that grace many Bali postcards.
Adamant he would resist the lure of big dollars from prospective hoteliers, and claiming the village's several hundred residents back him, Mahardika envisages tourists staying in simple accommodation or just making day trips.
Bali is Indonesia's premier travel destination, attracting nearly 1.5 million foreign tourists last year out of the five million who visited the world's largest archipelago.
It has been largely free of the civil unrest that has rocked other parts of Indonesia since the mainly Muslim country plunged into economic and social chaos in the late 1990s.
Mahardika said another reason for preserving the rice fields was to protect Bali's traditional system of rice growing called Subak, an integral part of Balinese culture where farmers work together to share water and maintain irrigation systems.
About 100 tiny stone or wooden temples dot Selemadeg Kaja's rice fields, attesting to the offerings made in prayer for good harvests as part of Subak, which dates back centuries and emerged from traditional Balinese culture and the island's Hindu faith.
Nyoman Sutawan, a professor of agricultural at Bali's Udayana University, said keeping tourist developments away from the island's rice paddies was vital. Many fields near Bali's urban areas had already been lost to the tourist dollar, he said.
"What's most important is that Subak is a tool for environmental protection, it protects the land, prevents floods and landslides during the rainy season...," Sutawan told Reuters.