Location
Palermo
Start Date
26-6-2025 3:30 PM
End Date
26-6-2025 4:30 PM
Description
Tourism is growing and growing fast. Before the pandemic, in 2018, the number of arrivals worldwide reached 1.4 billion arrivals from less than 600 million, twenty years earlier. In Indonesia, after being elected in 2014, former President Joko Widodo emphasized the importance of tourism, considered as a strategic sector. It had to become the largest exchange currency contributor bypassing rubber, coal, oil and gas.
In the collective awareness of tourists, Bali remains the place to go. International visitors praise the beautiful landscapes and paddy fields of Bali, the uniqueness of its Hindu and Buddhist cultures. In 2018, the “island of the Gods” ranked within the twenty best destinations in the Global Destination Cities Index with more than 8 million visitors. Such a performance, and the associated revenues, prompted the governmental decision to develop “10 new Bali” across Indonesia.
Unfortunately, a closer picture offers a different reality. If foreign visitors fill the pockets of some happy few, tourism appears on its back side as “a factory of poverty” and a destructive force. Bali is a place where the various types of tourism frequently clash. Religious tourism faces mass tourism; nature lovers discover landscapes spoiled. Drug business and gangs flourish whereas at the same time the authenticity of the local culture vanishes.
Worse, at a time scientific results indicate major changes in weather, agriculture, water availability; tourism may impact the specific identity, destroy the unique character, the networks of complicity and mutual aid that make the cement of the island.
Whereas the first part revisited the evolution of Bali in the last 100 years and stressed that time is running to stop the killing of Bali and the disappearance of a unique culture, its religious sanctuaries and pilgrimages; the current article will focus on environmental issues, mass consumption and terrorist attacks.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/9wpb-9809
Included in
E2) Killing Bali (Part II)
Palermo
Tourism is growing and growing fast. Before the pandemic, in 2018, the number of arrivals worldwide reached 1.4 billion arrivals from less than 600 million, twenty years earlier. In Indonesia, after being elected in 2014, former President Joko Widodo emphasized the importance of tourism, considered as a strategic sector. It had to become the largest exchange currency contributor bypassing rubber, coal, oil and gas.
In the collective awareness of tourists, Bali remains the place to go. International visitors praise the beautiful landscapes and paddy fields of Bali, the uniqueness of its Hindu and Buddhist cultures. In 2018, the “island of the Gods” ranked within the twenty best destinations in the Global Destination Cities Index with more than 8 million visitors. Such a performance, and the associated revenues, prompted the governmental decision to develop “10 new Bali” across Indonesia.
Unfortunately, a closer picture offers a different reality. If foreign visitors fill the pockets of some happy few, tourism appears on its back side as “a factory of poverty” and a destructive force. Bali is a place where the various types of tourism frequently clash. Religious tourism faces mass tourism; nature lovers discover landscapes spoiled. Drug business and gangs flourish whereas at the same time the authenticity of the local culture vanishes.
Worse, at a time scientific results indicate major changes in weather, agriculture, water availability; tourism may impact the specific identity, destroy the unique character, the networks of complicity and mutual aid that make the cement of the island.
Whereas the first part revisited the evolution of Bali in the last 100 years and stressed that time is running to stop the killing of Bali and the disappearance of a unique culture, its religious sanctuaries and pilgrimages; the current article will focus on environmental issues, mass consumption and terrorist attacks.