The Island in the Center of the World

The tiny boat bobs in the channel like a cork adrift at sea; the spray from the bow moistens the air as fish school in the clear waters to starboard and port. We are on passage from the southeast coast of Bali to the rugged island of Nusa Penida, crossing one of the world’s deepest channels, the Bali-Lombok Strait, which descends almost two thousand meters into the abyss. Our craft is one of the ubiquitous fishermen’s’ boats so familiar to this part of the world, known locally as jukung, and the hold is packed full with thousands of bamboo seedlings.

On our approach the island’s tall cliffs leap heavenward from the dark blues of the Indian Ocean, as long waves roll beneath us. A warm sea breeze floats overhead, birds glide endlessly on the wind, and the sun beats down ferociously. Towering in the distance behind us are the great volcanic peaks of Bali, now bathed in shadow like lions crouching between clouds, while before us the many barren peaks and forested valleys of Nusa Penida flex and fold like sheets of dark green and earth brown origami.

The island of Nusa Penida was once thickly forested, but now the hillsides are bare and covered in low lying and thorny shrubbery. Many years ago the island’s forests were felled for timber, except for at certain mountain peaks where ancient and highly significant Hindu temple complexes stand like forest guardians; at these places the deep greens and cool breezes of Nusa Penida’s extant tropical forests reach down the slope to the end of the temple lands, where they suddenly halt like waves that have reached a cliff.

Nusa Penida, encompassing approximately twenty-one thousand hectares at 08°42,904” S and 115°32,705”E, is the least populated and most impoverished area of Bali. Its administration falls under the Regency of Klungkung, and its population is overwhelmingly Hindu. Centuries ago, very powerful kingdoms had their palaces and courts on the island, but today little of this remains and the island is considered by many to possess certain supernatural and mystical qualities.

As we slowly inch toward the small beach front village of Toyapakeh, where we will unload our packed hold of bamboo seedlings, we reflect on the little history that we know of the island. A toothless old man squats next to us along the starboard rail. He smiles and we begin to chat. He extends a boney finger and points, saying: “And that is Pura Ped, a very important temple.” He continues to talk of the island as the boat pierces the lagoon and its prow slides smoothly up to the sand; he was born and lives here, but was visiting a son in Bali who had left the island to find more and better job prospects. He laments the sad and lonely state of his island and talks of powerful kingdoms in centuries past, and we are left with a great feeling of history and excitement.

Pak Bayu is a man of great humor and warmth, and as we shake hands he welcomes us to his nursery and explains why sea weed farming is dangerous to the ecology of the island’s northern coast. He then pauses for a moment, squints at the sun, quickly issues a few orders in rapid Balinese to the staff unloading the truck, and mentions why local men and women will farm it anyway, concluding with a deep laugh and a quick joke.

He is that most rare breed of conservationists, one who is also a realist, and he is also the head of FNPF and our lead local partner is what is quietly being recognized as a ground breaking example of corporate social responsibility.

We unload the thousands of bamboo seedlings, and the staff of the Friends of the National Parks Foundation (FNPF), our partner NGO in this project, run between the beached jukung and the small flat-bed truck with arms full of bamboo seedlings of many and diverse species: endemic Javanese ampel, Balinese petung from the cool and rain-beaten forests of Tabanan, sprightly pancing seedlings from the banks of the Ayung River, and Buddha Belly and Guadua from the Atlantic forests of Colombia. Soon, the truck is loaded and we are motoring through the small streets of the village before joining a tiny coastal road which snakes northward, twisting between coconut groves and tiny beach-side shacks of woven palm leaves, where coastal residents dry and sort the harvest from the island’s many sea weed farms.

The John Hardy Company of Bali, designers and producers of some of the most sought after hand-made luxury jewelry in the world, has long been an environmentally and socially aware company. Its founders, John and Cynthia Hardy, approach their business in an inspiring and amazingly simple way: create the most beautiful and exquisite pieces of hand-made jewelry while being respectful of Bali’s land, people, and culture. This philosophy is evident is many things that they do, from providing an organic and healthy meal to their seven hundred-plus employees every day, to the mid-wife clinic they support, the low-impact structures they build, their aspirations to preside over a carbon neutral company, and their many environmentally-friendly initiatives ranging from initiating large-scale recycling programs to using only certified responsible paper.

In 2005, John had the idea to offset the greenhouse gas emissions associated with his print advertising campaigns by planting bamboo, a very strong, quickly growing, and dynamic material that had been capturing his and many other environmentalist’s attention. The island of Nusa Penida, wreathed in legend and mystery and now almost totally deforested seemed to John an obvious challenge and a very positive place to begin. John visited to island on many occasions, and working together with Pak Bayu, they identified a unique environmental and social opportunity in planting bamboo there. Not only would the bamboo sequester carbon dioxide and serve as voluntary emissions offset from the company, the bamboo would also provide a habitat for the highly endangered Bali starling songbiard (Leucuposar rothschildi) and yield positive social and local economic returns as the planting methodology would be community-based.

The details were quickly worked out and planting began in late November 2006, with the aim to offset 451 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas emissions, which was the emissions requirement to offset John’s print advertisements.

Frequent shipments consisting of thousands of seedlings of bamboo over the past several months has to date resulted in many thousands of bamboo plantings on the island, all of which have broad community support through John’s insistence to work with community groups directly. To date, there are five local farmers’ cooperatives participating in the plantings, and dozens of other individual farmers who come by the FNPF nursery to gather bamboo seedlings to take and plant on their own lands throughout the island. One of these men is I Nyoman Citra, the head of the Tebe Lestari farmers’ cooperative, which is based in Banjar Saren on the island’s south coast.

Pak Man Citra, as he insists we call him, chats for a while with Pak Bayu as we stroll through the nursery looking at the newly arrived seedlings. Rain is starting to fall heavily on his land in the south, good news for a typically arid island, and he wants to plant some seedlings and take advantage of the optimal soil conditions. We load a truck with a couple hundred seedlings and lurch upward into Nusa Penida’s thin mountain roads, bumping and bouncing around as the axles hit the many holes and scars which lay scattered throughout the island’s primitive road system. We turn past old temples and sullen villages, and wind through deep valleys and over barren ridges before turning at a small Hindu shrine which marks the entrance to Banjar Saren. Pak Man Citra’s brothers and cousins and other members of the Tebe Lestari farmers’ cooperative come pouring out into the street, and we all unload the seedings together. Each member of the cooperative gets a few, some more than others, and Pak Man Citra more than anybody. He hoists armfuls of seedlings and motions for us to follow him up a thin alley. After a quick glass of warm tea and a few laughs at his house, we begin a brisk hike to his land. He talks of the rain and the soil while setting an unbelievable pace. Soon we arrive in a sunken valley, green and lush, with deeply fragrant soil.

“Here.” He says, and we lay the seedlings down. He has already dug dozens of holes for the seedlings, each conical and with long sloping walls to trap water and funnel it to the thirsty seedling. We set to work, planting bamboo with Pak Man Citra in Banjar Saren on Nusa Penida.

Later in the day, as evening hangs heavy in the air, we climb above the valley and onto a dry ridge. The soil is thin and it sits loosely atop large chunks of limestone, remnants of a pre-historic reef which is now this ridge. The Indian Ocean swells and heaves into the deep southern distance, mist coming off of its waves and the deep blues turning to darker colors inseparable from the sky as the sun leans to the west and behind Bali in the distance. We have more bamboo to plant tomorrow; and after tomorrow, there will be more bamboo to plant still.

A New Century, A New Tourism

The numbers, as they say, do not lie. Across the world, from Europe to Australia, and the United States and Canada, surveys consistently demonstrate that between 50-60% of respondents feel that travel should involve new experiences and offer learning opportunities. Increasingly, the traditional sand, sun, and beach holiday is being incorporated into a larger trend in which a day at the beach is complemented by specialized cooking classes, nature surveys, anthropological research, and a host of other activities.

Tourism is the largest business sector in the world economy. According to the International Ecotourism Society, the sector employs over 200 million people and generates USD 3.6 trillion in annual economic activity. Tourism is such a large business that if it were a country, it would have the world’s second largest economy, just behind that of the United States.

The unique dynamics of travel and tourism are very frequently leveraged across wide geo-political areas, with the result that in 4 out of 5 countries globally it is in the top five of export earners; that translates to 150 countries worldwide, and in 60 of them tourism is the top earner. Further, 83% of developing countries list tourism as a principle export – or, foreign exchange earner – and again, according to the International Ecotourism Society, tourism is the only industry in which developing countries have consistently posted a surplus over the past decade.

Ecotourism is broadly defined as responsible travel to areas in a fashion that conserves biological and human diversity. Although a relatively young industry, it has already carved out its particular market niche; and that niche is predicted to grow sizably in the near future as more and more people and families abandon the traditional holiday in favor of a more adventurous and educational travel experience.

From bird watching holidays in the Costa Rican rainforest canopy, to live-aboard diving cruises in the south Pacific, ecotourism and its facilities, packages, and resorts have taken root the world over. And it is interesting to note that a remarkably sizeable percentage of current and potential ecotourism destinations are in the developing world, where governments and other private and public organizations struggle daily to conserve natural diversity in an ever-modernizing world.

The connections between biodiversity and cultural diversity have long been noted and described by scientists and researchers. Places like the Amazon, the Congo, the Himalayas, and Indonesia’s eastern islands – to name but a few – are not only natural wonders, they are also human wonders; areas rife with unique cultures, isolated languages, primitive religions. And at the great risk of sounding like a cultural relativist, these areas are in their own way as unique and special as more developed and less remote cultures and places. In short, they are worthy of a visit, if for only the ‘wow’ factor.

But in visiting such places, the ecotourism industry must be extremely careful to not homogenize the very unique and special variety they are trying to promote and protect. Ecotourism should be about responsibility and conservation, and not a ‘slash and burn’ industry in which an area is discarded when too modern and a new area is then discovered, promoted, and in turn discarded also.

Unfortunately, the unique demand of the industry is also its great weakness: it strives to constantly locate and expose the new, the rare, and the undocumented. And in a world of limited resources and diminishing natural returns that is an unsustainable and volatile business.

There are several national and international ecotourism associations and organizations that seek to address this instability through networking and information. After all, the reasons to make a holiday in the Amazon Jungle are to photograph wild animals, view rare flora, and expand your knowledge of the world and your place within a complicated system of interactions that have taken millennia to build. In that, the goals of an ecotourist are remarkably aligned with that of a conservationist or research scientist. And if this is truly our one and only world – which, when the last time I checked, was a correct statement – then we as citizens of the world all share some token of responsibility for its stewardship.

The Trash Collectors of Pedungan and Bubugan

DENPASAR - Pemulung are the trash collectors you see pedaling around town on old bicycles. In the absence of any reliable and comprehensive public waste disposal system, they are the guys who, motivated by economic incentive, essentially do our dirty work. Pemulung, which means ‘scavenger’ in Bahasa Indonesia, also collect on foot, drive trucks, and act as agents who buy and sell and deal in a market of discarded items. From the moment you toss an empty plastic Aqua water bottle, until it resurfaces in a plastics recycling facility in Surabaya, where it is shredded and pelleted and then resold, the pemulung are along every step of the way.

I recently paid a visit to a pemulung area - you might call it a village - in Sesetan, an area of southern Denpasar. The area is home to many pemulung and, in some instances, their families as well. It consists of a shanty town-like assemblage of shacks and heaps of piled waste just off of Jalan Pulau Rote in Pedungan.

The pemulung of Pedungan are relatively small players in a complex system that, when we discuss trash and the island of Bali, involves luxury hotels, buying and selling agents in Bali and Java, public services, various provincial and regency ministries, and you – the reader (if you happen to reside in Bali, or indeed, many other places throughout Indonesia and the developing world).

The pemulung only collect waste that is economically valuable. In Pedungan they collect paper (Rp. 700/kg), magazine paper (Rp. 350/kg.), plastics (Rp. 1,500/kg.), cans (Rp. 8,000/kg.) and glass bottles that are then returned to agents. There are categories and sub-categories of waste, and each has a distinct value that is reflective of its relative importance in terms of re-making a profit from rubbish.

Across town in an area of east Denpasar called Kesiman is another pemulung area. Called Bubugan, the area is home to pemulung from Java, Madura, and beyond. The pemulung of Bubugan essentially collect the same items as those in Pedungan; though supply of rubbish is endless, demand is limited to certain items. Aluminum cans and clear plastics have an intrinsic material value – it is cheaper, for example, to reuse than to remake aluminum - while other items like plastic bags have none.

Though the pemulung, motivated by market forces, essentially provide waste disposal services in many areas around Bali, they are limited by the demands of the market. A major challenge when we talk of waste is not only what type of waste, but what waste is of value and what is not. If it were worth their while to collect all types of waste rather than just some types, this island would be a far cleaner place.