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as I said, if Bali is primarily sold as a cultural tourism destination, then Bali, as a destination, should be serious about maintaining its agrarian culture. It’s important to understand that if we remain careless with our culture and allow the savage exploitation of our water and soil to continue, the consequence to both culture and tourism will be absolute deterioration. We will have nothing left. In saying that, I support Bali tourism—but only quality tourism—tourism that is not exploitative to its natural resources and doesn’t disgrace the culture here. We don’t want what I like to call mining industry tourism. Balinese are taught Tri Hita Karana, and because of this, in our day-today activities we are instructed to take care of the environment, in whatever we do. When the beach is polluted, the groundwater brackish, the forest without trees, and the rice fields have become industrial zones, Bali will end up being Bali minus agrarian culture, and what is Bali then? What else can we offer? So, there you go, the answer is that quality tourism needs to exist parallel with Tri Hita Karana philosophy. How’s the government responding to all your protests? I keep shouting, screaming, and writing complaints but, even though I’m doing this, the government hasn’t accommodated the protests. To me this means that they are clueless. In truth, the government has no adaptive policies for environmental troubleshooting.
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More often than not, our protests have been regarded as destructive moves rather than constructive solutions and, as our protests are not considered serious, they have been responded to with unproductive statements, responses which can only be described as a significant disrespect upon our right to express our perspectives—rights which are supposedly guaranteed by Indonesian law. In a few of these cases, such statements from the government have forced us, Walhi, to sue the Governor through the Denpasar Civil Service Arbitration Tribunal. In one such case, permission was given to PT Tirta Rahmat Bahari to manage the mangrove park of Ngurah Rai. There have also been many cases where the governor has let developments go ahead even though they are in complete breech of environmental law. But the same thing has happened with the parliament, especially Commission III, which focuses on environment. It’s a complete joke. There are times when they act as if they appreciate our activities, and support us by, say,
releasing harsh statements to environmental criminals, but then they retract. All of a sudden they just change; they’ll swing from angry to a bit calmer, from calm to taking sides, and then wham, they make us their enemy! It was a bit of a sad joke when the Secretary of Commission III asked us to send a letter of admonition to the Badung Regent regarding the development of Hotel Mulia in Nusa Dua. Oh, and also when the general public requested to know how come Commission III weren’t progressing with the mangrove park problem, they said that they are waiting for Walhi to send a formal letter to the court. Isn’t it a little weird how legislative action is dependent on us initiating a move? I mean, isn’t that their job? Some people say that the institution that you are the head of, Wahli, is secretly driven by overseas interests and by new cultural imperialists… I’m not at all interested in answering this kind of shallow rumour. I am, we are, openly driven by our conscience, by our idealism. Next question, please. How can we keep Bali beautiful? Can you enlighten me, and the rest of the people out there, in three easy steps? 1. Start living an environmentally friendly kind of life. Don’t just talk about slogans and teachings such as Tri Kita Karana, apply them in your actual life. 2. Watch over policies regarding environment, and then promote the information. You can start by searching for, sharing and discussing issues using social media. 3. Get out of the house and participate. Rally, protest, be a part of positive change. To participate, you don’t need no money, just a whole lot of spirit! Well, no, sorry, I don’t want you to think it’s going to be easy. You know how they say that it’s not easy being green? It’s true, but if we work hard, if we all go green together, it’ll be way easier. Last nagging words? “The world is big enough to satisfy everyone needs, but will always be too small to satisfy everyone’s greed.” Those are Ghandi’s words.