It’s a good question. Photo: WSL
Last year, I spent six months travelling around Indonesia. I feel blessed to have had the experiences I had. I learned about Balinese culture, I surfed some incredible waves, and I got to understand life in another country. I experienced many of the feelings that draw other people to leave their own countries and relocate, for good, to places where their dollar is worth more and they can carve out a slice of paradise for themselves.
Two months out of the six, I spent in Uluwatu. I followed many people I met on social media and have since been watching their lives unfold. Interestingly, many of them have since left Bali, complaining that it is not the Bali they first experienced and fell in love with.
The destruction of Uluwatu, and the construction of a coastal road through the cliffs above the famed surf breaks, has been a hot topic for months now. With the left breaking waves of Temples, Secrets, and Lurches under threat as excavators throw chunks of the cliff into the ocean, the outcries concerning environmental risks, surfing risks, and disrespect to Balinese locals has evolved into the inevitable finger pointing. Who is to blame?
The obvious answer, concerning who is paying for and planning this project, is the Indonesian Badung Regency government, which failed to make the scope of the project known to the public before embarking on the long and unfortunate journey which is now 60 percent completed. The secondary, and perhaps more important, answer is the tourists, surfers, and ex-pats who contribute to the economy and boost the demand for housing, infrastructure, and developments such as this one.
A press statement from Save The Waves reported that surfers and surf tourism contribute almost $35 million to Bali’s local economy. Over 235,000 surfers reportedly visit the area annually. In other words, the Balinese government is sitting between a rock and a hard place: they must decide whether to save the historic temple, which has spiritual significance and draws tons of tourists, or save the famous wave, which also generates significant surf tourism.
Here’s the question I haven’t seen many people ask: are surf tourists and ex-pats to blame for this type of destruction? Ex-pats, specifically, often rent upscale (or comparably for country-wide standards) properties in Bali, driving up demand for high-end developments.
When I was in Bali, I couldn’t sleep through a night without hearing hammers hit nails. The sounds, sights, and smells of construction were inescapable. If you left for a month to visit another island, you would return to find a new boutique, Western restaurant, or hotel where previously there was an open field.
Traffic congestion, roads desperately in need of restoration, and water supplies are also noteworthy problems that ex-pats and surf tourists are not innocent from causing, or at least contributing to. Western visitors typically use more energy and resources than local residents, further exacerbating issues such as overdevelopment, water shortages, and living conditions for the permanent population.
Gentrification is a hot topic within the United States, especially right now with the recent Palisades Fires, but for whatever reason rarely surfaces when discussing living in foreign countries. There is a reason our U.S. dollar affords what it does within the U.S. There is also a reason it affords so much more in countries where it is worth two, three, or even five times as much. Cheap prices most likely mean cheap labor, which negatively impacts the local communities in the places tourists visit, but that is another ethical conversation on its own.
I’m not alone in bringing up this question of who is to blame for overdevelopment and destruction: I Wayan Suyadnya, a professor at the Department of Sociology and Center for Culture and Frontier Studies at Universitas Brawijaya, an Indonesian university, published a piece titled Tourism Gentrification in Bali, Indonesia: A Wake-up Call for Overtourism in the peer-reviewed MASYARAKAT Journal of Sociology.
Suyadnya wrote that there are several areas of Bali that suffer from tourism-driven gentrification, where locals and newcomers (ex-pats and tourists) cannot exist in harmony. While western visitors contribute to Bali’s economic advancement, the decline in quality of gentrified destinations is evident.
This issue, according to Suyadnya, is a combination of poor planning and excessive development on the part of the government, combined with tourists putting local communities in a place where they are displaced and cannot oppose development. Suyadnya concludes by advocating for better tourism planning and management, including emphasis on spatial harmony, involving local organization in planning processes, minimizing property developers, and protecting cultural spaces.
The new road at Uluwatu. Photo: Piter Panjaitan
Still, I can’t help but wonder how ex-pats (including surfers) play a role in this. If people were not moving to Indonesia and living a life of luxury on their American or Australian dime, there would be far less demand for housing developments, the displacement of local people due to rising housing costs, and overall gentrification that lessens the quality of the land overall.
The worst part of all of this is that visitors, whether that be tourists or ex-pats, can simply leave when they decide they don’t want to continue to live in the overdeveloped area they helped create. I watched friends and Balinese ex-pats simply relocate to other countries when they realized things weren’t getting better, more people were doing what they did 10 years ago and moving to Bali, and prices weren’t going down. In other words, these ex-pats realized that the issues they created were affecting them, so they just left.
I want to make sure this point comes across loud and clear: I am admitting that I am part of the problem. I am not condemning people who choose to live in other countries for whatever reason they do. I am not judging surf travelers for visiting Indonesia or any other location around the world. Travel is a beautiful thing, usually leads to more acceptance of other ways of life, and can open our eyes to work that needs to be done to improve living conditions for people worldwide. But when it comes to issues such as the destruction of places tourists and locals love so much, the only thing that is clear is that it is a complicated situation.
I think about Indonesia every day. I would love to return, to shoot and swim in the crystal clear waters, to ride a moped down a winding road in search of empty breaks, to party at the clifftop clubs. But at this point, I’m not sure if I will — or can, with my moral compass intact – return. The ethics of enjoying the fruits of my American dollar in a country that needs that money to go towards environmental conservation, activist efforts, and protecting cultural spaces seem at best, selfish, and at worst, evil.
Hopefully, as I continue to grapple with the ethics of surf travel, I’ll learn from others who can enlighten me with ways to positively impact communities in need as I can hopefully explore the world without destroying what makes these places so special.
Editor’s Note: Ella Boyd has been a writer and photographer for The Inertia since 2021, traveling the world covering surf and snow sports.
