Leaders Call For Bali Tourism Tax Funds To Be Spent Fixing Island’s Waterways To Reduce Future Flood Risk

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Leaders in Bali are calling for funds generated through the Bali Tourism Tax Levy to be spent on supporting the island’s waterway management system, known as the subak.

This UNESCO-protected water management system has been used on the island for centuries, but rampant development over the last 50 years has hugely affected water flow, and the devastating floods of the last week are evidence of such. 

In February 2024, the Bali Provincial Government introduced the Bali Tourism Tax Levy. This tourism tax is a IDR 150,000 fee applicable to all international tourists visiting Bali, including children.

While the first round of funds has been delivered to traditional village leaders to invest in their communities on a local level, some provincial leaders are calling for the next round of tourism tax funds to be spent on supporting both the subak system and waste management on the island. 

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Waste management issues in Bali are no secret. Yet, this week’s devastating flooding has brought into focus where the provincial government and local communities, as well as businesses on the island, need to be working together to ensure that the spatial planning and land use are not only strategised but also redeveloped in a sustainable way. 

Originally, the Bali Tourism Tax Levy was set to help nurture nature, conserve culture, and level up infrastructure. Yet, 18 months into the scheme, it is hard to pinpoint compelling evidence of funds being used in an impactful way in any of these three areas.

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The Head of the Denpasar Regional Financial and Asset Management Agency (BPKAD), Dr Ni Putu Kusumawati, explained that the Denpasar City Government has received emergency support funding from the Bali Provincial Government in the form of IDR 150 million for supporting the subak system and IDR 10 billion for waste management.

Though she told reporters that she ‘did not know’ if these Special Financial Assistance (BKK) funds contained funds generated from the Bali Tourism Tax Levy.

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Speaking separately, the Mayor of Denpasar, IGN Jaya Negara, told reporters that funds from the Bali Tourism Tax Levy must be used to support the sustainability of tourism in Bali, by addressing waste, water, and road infrastructure issues that will also impact local communities.

He told reporters, “Ideally, if it is true that from 6 million tourists with [tourism tax fees] of IDR 150,000 per foreign national, there would be IDR 900 billion in annual funding. We hope to also receive funding from the [Bali tourism tax].”

Support has been issued to communities across Bali from both the provincial and regency governments, as well as from community support groups, crowd-funding efforts, local NGOs, and local businesses.

The clean-up effort will be intensive, though for many in Bali, life goes on around the devastation and recovery work. Many efforts in Denpasar, Kuta, Seminyak, and Canggu were hampered on Monday as more heavy rainfall fell across the central south of the island. 

Rampant development has been pinpointed as one of the root causes of the devastating flooding in Bali in the last week.

With more than 1,000 hectares of agricultural land converted into commercial buildings every year, over the last decade, the island has lost a dramatic amount of its agricultural landscape and, in turn, its natural water management system.

Now, when heavy rainfall arrives on the island, there is less land mass that can receive, retain, and channel the water.

This, coupled with a major waste management issue, ranging from overflowing landfills to plastic waste regularly being dumped into the subak system, and in some cases, waste and debris are already blocking water courses, means that when substantial rainfall arrives, the water has no other course than to flood.