The People’s Favourite Tourist Destination, Bali, Is Having A Water Crisis. The people’s favourite destination seems to be having a problem with water lately.
The people’s favourite destination seems to be having a problem with water lately. Bali people have split water resources through ‘subak’- an irrigation system that diverts the water from the channel to the rice fields and then vice-versa. However, the diverting of water to urban places in the populated south in the recent years has messed up the irrigation system.
It is also reported that the high number use of groundwater by hotels that have about 16 million domestic and local tourists that have went to Bali last year have also messed up the irrigation system. News24 says Bali’s water crisis is being a threat to the traditional culture, food security and the way life is at the island. A journalist, Anton Muhajir, says, “I believe Bali is in real danger. Some of friends have had to move from their ancestral homes in Denspasar because the water in their wells has turned salty.”
“At Jatiluwih where thousands of tourists go each day to see the most beautiful where thousands of tourists go each day to see the most rice terraces of Bali farmers are using plastic pipes to pump in water they have to buy in south because the springs in the mountains are drying up. And now we have drought not just in Bali but in nearly every province in Indonesia,” says Anton Muhajir. The ‘subak’ system is used in Bali and is a world heritage but tourism has left some areas of Bali in drought.
by Alexandra Ramaite