Bali locals up in arms over plan to build artificial islands to host luxury resorts in Benoa Bay

Not far from tourists sipping cocktails on Bali’s tropical, palm-fringed beaches, thousands of protesters in sarongs and headdresses waved banners and chanted during a noisy protest.

It was an unusual sight on the “Island of the Gods”, which is better known for hordes of foreign visitors, its ancient Hindu culture and picture-postcard temples. But a proposed US$15 billion project that involves constructing artificial islets to host luxury resorts in Benoa Bay has sparked the biggest protest movement seen on the resort island for years.

Critics say the last thing the overcrowded tourist hub needs is the major land reclamation, which they claim will damage the environment, destroy fishermen’s livelihoods and desecrate holy sites in the pocket of Hinduism in Muslim-majority Indonesia.

Environmentalists fear new resorts will create a lot of waste, that may end up being dumped in to the bay. There are also concerns the islets would disrupt the flow of water from several rivers out to sea – leading to dirty water being pushed back to Bali, and may cause flooding.

“There will be floods in the future, the water will be dirty and smelly,” said protest leader Wayan Gendo Suardana at the demonstration, which brought together thousands of villagers and environmentalists, with music provided by local pop stars. “Benoa Bay is a holy site for Balinese Hindus which needs to be protected.”

Tourism on Bali, which is home to most of Indonesia’s Hindu minority, began to take off in the 1970s and has been accompanied by a boom in resort construction. The industry has developed steadily in the decades since – although tourist numbers dipped for a time following deadly bomb attacks in 2002 and 2005 – and Bali last year welcomed four million foreign visitors.