THE RIGHTS TO LAND, FOOD AND TOURISM RELATED TO AGRICULTURAL LAND CONVERSION IN BALI: HOW SUBAK PLAY A ROLE?

Abstract

Bali, one of the world’s tourism destinations, is now facing a paradoxical situation because the increasing number of tourists visiting Bali is going hand in hand with the gradual reduction in productive agricultural land due to land conversion. This paper analyzes the massive practice of converting productive farmland for tourism in Bali. It offers a human rights law lens, particularly the rights to land, food, and tourism, to view the problem discussed in the paper. Legal research primarily reads international legal instruments, Indonesia’s laws and regulations, and some secondary materials. The paper suggested that although the Bali provincial government has issued rules and policies to prevent the practice of land conversion, the government cannot fully control it because many agricultural lands have ownership status. Therefore, there is an urgent need to increase awareness of local communities as landowners to prevent such a practice. This paper also proposes using subak, a traditional farming system, as the basis for ecotourism and agrotourism activities to tackle the problem of land conversion in Bali.

Keywords

• land conversion
• human rights
• tourism
• food security
• subak