BUYAN, Indonesia — Every year since 2000, the water level of
Bali’s Lake Buyan has been falling, leaving many locals puzzled.
Some believe deforestation in the surrounding mountains is to
blame, while green groups suspect the shrinking lake is emblematic of looming
water shortages the Indonesian island is likely to face as more and more
tourists visit.
"I don’t know why but it looks like the trees have been cut
down," said vegetable farmer Nyoman Suarjaya, standing near an embankment now
several hundred meters from the lake’s edge.
"So there’s no water catchment," he added.
He pointed to a pavilion built a few years ago for tourists
to launch canoes onto the lake. It now lies abandoned near an expansive stretch
of land that once used to be the lake bed and now has become fields for
vegetable growers.
Lake Buyan, one of Bali’s deepest, no longer draws tourists,
just locals curious to see the receding lake which has faced a 3.5 meters (11
feet) drop in water levels since 2000.
In the densely populated south of Bali, tourism and the
construction industry are fuelling a boom in the island’s economy, which serves
as a regional business hub.
About two-thirds of Bali’s 3.5 million people live in the
main city Denpasar and further south to the tourist areas of Seminyak, Legian,
Kuta and Nusa Dua, where environment ministers are meeting this week to try to
agree on the outlines of a broader pact to fight global warming.
Tourism has rebounded this year after a series of bomb
blasts. The recent construction boom involving factories, malls, luxury villas,
spas and high-end resorts has led to ever-greater demands for water, electricity
and waste management.
But some parts of the island, named in a recent Travel +
Leisure magazine poll as the world’s best, are already facing water shortages or
salt-water intrusion into wells.
Environmentalists and some government officials say the
problems could become worse unless significant investment is made and people
started conserving water.
"If there’s no change in this fast-growing tourism
development, it’s not impossible that Bali will suffer from a water crisis in
the next 10 years," said Agung Wardana from Wahli, a leading Indonesian
environment group.
"The current emphasis is the development of the tourism
industry which results in changes in productive and open lands that reduce the
ability to provide ground water. This is made worse by neglect of river system,"
he added.
Many Balinese rely on wells for water but in some areas, particularly in the
tourist centre of Kuta, so much is being extracted that salt water is fouling
supplies. Rubbish and sewage being dumped into rivers was also affecting water
quality.
