As Bali runs dry, can tourism help replenish its water?

The travel & tour­ism industry can be expec­ted to hon­our the human right to water, par­tic­u­larly in com­munit­ies and des­tin­a­tions in which it oper­ates. Industry stake­hold­ers need not see this as a bur­den, but rather as a com­pel­ling oppor­tun­ity to mean­ing­fully engage with loc­al people on secur­ing tra­di­tion­al water sup­plies, all the while devel­op­ing more sus­tain­able water and waste man­age­ment sys­tems of their own.

Nic­olaus Sulistyo sheds light on IDEP Found­a­tion’s Bali Water Pro­tec­tion (BWP) ini­ti­at­ive; an EXO Found­a­tion Sus­tain­ab­il­ity Award winner. 

Behind the luxury

A villa or hotel in the heart of a tour­ist area was once a fer­tile rice field, where every har­vest was a source of live­li­hood for loc­al com­munit­ies. The strong flow of water in a guest’s shower — enjoyed so freely today — is the same water that once ran through the subak irrig­a­tion chan­nels, man­aged col­lect­ively by cus­tom­ary villages. 

Behind the lux­ury, Bali is facing a water crisis that threatens the island’s very survival.

When we vis­it Bali, the private pool becomes ‘ours’ for a few days or weeks. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west and, from ‘our’ villa, we can watch it rise over a cliff or set over rice pad­dies … or we can do yoga. All of it feels like ‘ours’, so long as we pay for it.

Bali remains a tour­ism para­dise only because water is, for now, suf­fi­ciently avail­able. It comes from sur­face sources dis­trib­uted by the region­al water com­pany (PDAM) and from ground­wa­ter extrac­ted dir­ectly by busi­ness owners. 

Ground­wa­ter extrac­tion bey­ond house­hold use requires per­mits and loc­al tax con­tri­bu­tions, yet many con­tin­ue to take it illeg­ally, drain­ing the island’s shared reserves without con­trib­ut­ing to their sustainability.

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The true cost of comfort

In 2024, the Indone­sian For­um for the Envir­on­ment (Wal­hi) Bali revealed a stark real­ity: Star-rated hotels require 800 litres of water per room per day, while non-star hotels need around 250 litres. By com­par­is­on, daily domest­ic water needs per per­son are only around 200 litres.

“There are two main issues in the water crisis: a quant­ity prob­lem, where Bali exper­i­ences ground­wa­ter decline due to over-extrac­tion, and a qual­ity prob­lem, namely sea­wa­ter intru­sion,” explained Prof. Lilik Sudiad­jeng, a research­er from Bali State Poly­tech­nic (PNB), present­ing joint research with IDEP Selaras Alam dur­ing the Bali Water Fest­iv­al on July 30, 2024.

Tour­ism in Bali is grow­ing rap­idly, but the water that sus­tains it is evap­or­at­ing just as fast. To ensure tour­ists have a com­fort­able stay, rice pad­dies are dis­ap­pear­ing and water catch­ment areas are shrink­ing. Not only are we wit­ness­ing the degrad­a­tion of water qual­ity and quant­ity, we are also already con­sum­ing reserves meant for future generations.

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Living on the same water: Time to give back to Bali

The water that sus­tains life in Bali — for tour­ists, busi­ness oper­at­ors, and res­id­ents alike — comes from the same lim­ited sources, now under grow­ing pres­sure. For too long we have taken too much without giv­ing enough back. How much longer can we gamble like this?

Through its Bali Water Pro­tec­tion (BWP) ini­ti­at­ive, the IDEP Found­a­tion calls on the tour­ism industry to give back to the very ele­ment that sus­tains life and tour­ism here in Bali: the water that feeds its water­falls, lakes, rivers, and rice fields.

This ini­ti­at­ive is not just anoth­er con­ser­va­tion pro­ject: it is a pause, a breath for nature, before the gamble runs too far. BWP is a call to restore what Bali urgently needs to survive.

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Towards a new standard of tourism: What BWP offers today

Bali Water Pro­tec­tion (BWP) invites you to pro­tect the very water sources that sus­tain both life and tour­ism on the island. Every con­tri­bu­tion has a dir­ect impact. There are three main actions you can take. Choose one, two, or all three. Each choice makes a real dif­fer­ence. We call this Adop­Three: three prac­tic­al steps to help secure Bali’s water future. 

1) Adopt a well to return water to the ground

Ground­wa­ter in Bali is becom­ing crit­ic­ally scarce. Every day, thou­sands of litres are pumped for hotels, vil­las, and house­holds, while under­ground reserves are not being replen­ished quickly enough. Left unchecked, Bali will run out of clean water much soon­er than we expect. Mean­while, sea­wa­ter intru­sion into groud­wa­ter is spread­ing fur­ther inland.

Now is the time to return what we have been tak­ing. Through recharge wells, rain­wa­ter that usu­ally runs off can seep back into the soil, replen­ish­ing reserves for our col­lect­ive needs, includ­ing the future of the tour­ism industry.

One recharge well built through the Bali Water Pro­tec­tion (BWP) pro­gramme can replen­ish up to 41,000 litres of ground­wa­ter per hour. Put simply, for every hour of effect­ive recharge, one well can restore enough water to cov­er the annu­al basic needs of around two fam­il­ies of four, based on the inter­na­tion­al SPHERE stand­ard of 15 litres per per­son per day.

2) Adopt a river to reverse its decline

Bali once had clear rivers where chil­dren played and vil­la­gers fetched water. Today, many have become little more than con­crete drains choked with rub­bish and waste. If these rivers die, Bali loses one of its primary water sources. 

Through the Bali Water Pro­tec­tion (BWP) adopt a river pro­gramme, rivers are restored by plant­ing trees along their banks, clean­ing up waste, and reviv­ing their eco­sys­tems. Your dona­tion helps restore a sec­tion of a river by rehab­il­it­at­ing its bank and plant­ing trees, res­ult­ing in clean­er water, health­i­er eco­sys­tems, and safe, reli­able rivers for hun­dreds of nearby residents.

3) Adopt water awareness to educate the next generation of water guardians

The water crisis is about more than just infra­struc­ture; it’s about aware­ness. Without know­ledge, people will con­tin­ue to use water without real­ising its lim­its. Pub­lic edu­ca­tion is there­fore key to long-term water protection.

Through cam­paigns and edu­ca­tion­al pro­grammes — such as the Bali Water Pro­tec­tion (BWP) Com­pet­i­tion, the Bali Water Fest­iv­al, and school and com­munity activ­it­ies — people are recon­nect­ing with water and its sources: wells, rivers, and the subak system.

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Time for tourism to become a guardian of nature

Sus­tain­able tour­ism is no longer enough. We need regen­er­at­ive tour­ism. We need tour­ism that not only enter­tains but also heals. Tour­ism that plants, not just har­vests. Tour­ism that restores, not only consumes.

Bali can become a glob­al example of regen­er­at­ive tour­ism, where vis­it­ors, busi­nesses, and com­munit­ies col­lab­or­ate to restore eco­sys­tems, start­ing with water. Every litre recharged into the ground, every tree planted along a riverb­ank, every child learn­ing about water, becomes a liv­ing pil­lar for Bali’s future.

Every­one has a place in this move­ment. Change will not come from a single source. That is why Bali Water Pro­tec­tion opens its doors to all: five-star hotels, eco-resorts, tour oper­at­ors, industry asso­ci­ations, uni­ver­sit­ies, CSR donors, edu­cat­ors, influ­en­cers, and innovators. 

Wheth­er by fund­ing recharge wells, sup­port­ing edu­ca­tion cam­paigns, provid­ing facil­it­ies and expert­ise, or help­ing to spread the word, what mat­ters is that we act togeth­er. And not a one-time action; it must be a con­tinu­ous col­lect­ive commitment. 

Tour­ism can become a tool for heal­ing, but only if we begin with the aware­ness that we have caused harm and may still be doing so.

Now is the time to give back.

Water, like his­tory, car­ries memory. We still have time to cre­ate new memor­ies and change the course of his­tory: not just as users, but as guard­i­ans of Bali’s pre­cious water.

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About IDEP Foundation

In 1998, Indone­sia entered a phase of severe fin­an­cial and social crisis. In response, a diverse group of people from Bali got togeth­er to dis­cuss how they could best help. They dis­cussed the grow­ing chal­lenges faced by Indone­sian com­munit­ies and con­duc­ted an eval­u­ation of exist­ing nat­ur­al and human resources nationwide.

Since then, IDEP has been deliv­er­ing pub­lic edu­ca­tion and train­ing activ­it­ies and prac­tic­al pro­grams to com­munit­ies all over Indone­sia. IDEP devel­ops and deliv­ers train­ing, pro­grams, and media that are primar­ily focused on sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, espe­cially per­ma­cul­ture, and com­munity-based dis­aser man­age­ment. To date IDE­P’s work has res­ul­ted in:

• >10,000 kids join­ing envir­on­ment­al edu­ca­tion­al activities
• >5,000 people learn­ing about envir­on­ment­al management
• >100,000 people giv­en emer­gency assistance
• >50,000 dis­aster sur­viv­ors assisted
• >1,500 people learn­ing about dis­aster management
• >40 edu­ca­tion­al films produced
• >14,000 down­loads of edu­ca­tion­al media

IDEP Found­a­tion’s Bali Water Pro­tec­tion (BWP) ini­ti­at­ive is an EXO Found­a­tion Sus­tain­ab­il­ity Award winner. 

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About the author

Nic­olaus Sulistyo is a media and com­mu­nic­a­tions officer at IDEP Found­a­tion, where he tells stor­ies about envir­on­ment­al issues through words and visu­als. Before join­ing IDEP, Nic­olaus honed his skills in journ­al­ism with the stu­dent press at Atma Jaya Uni­ver­sity Yogyakarta, and took on freel­ance work as an enu­mer­at­or and scriptwriter for MLDSPOT TV. Out­side of work, he enjoys lit­er­at­ure and the music of Majel­is Lidah Berduri.

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As Bali runs dry, can tour­ism help replen­ish its water? 

“The water that sus­tains life in Bali — for tour­ists, busi­ness oper­at­ors, and res­id­ents alike — comes from the same lim­ited sources, now under grow­ing pres­sure. For too long, we have taken too much without giv­ing enough back. How much longer can we gamble like this?”

All images cour­tesy of the IDEP Found­a­tion. “GT” cropped some of them, and added “Run­ning dry” to the fea­tured image.

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