Bali Sawah Conservation Foundation

(working title)

Yayasan Konservasi Sawah Bali

Sawah (rice paddy) in Jatiluwih, Bali, a designated Unesco World Heritage site 2012

Overview

To ensure the future of Bali’s natural and historical heritage by protecting the endangered sawah . Balinese farmers are subjected to economic pressures to sell their livelihood and spiritual locus for development due to the gross income inequality between agriculture and the tourist industry as well as debt incurred. The destruction of the sawah will annihilate food security as well as the tourist based industry Bali has become dependent upon to raise its developing nation standard of living.

Project Description

To create a wholly controlled, managed and owned Balinese foundation (yayasan) that will conserve, monitor and provide stewardship for the sawah by replicating the US model of a Land Trust. The Project will have partnership with Bali/Indonesian +US NGO’s, educational institutions government affiliations and social entrepreneurships. In April, the Unesco representative and governing body in Bali, (Governing Assembly for Bali’s Cultural Heritage) for the World Heritage Sites invited the Project to be part of this Assembly.

Mission

Community Commitment: The Project will conduct community outreach /assessment forums to discuss with Balinese farmers on how They envision their future by looking at “How a Sense of Place” affects their ability to sustain an agricultural community, based on food security, adequate clean water and the dependent role that tourism plays in either sustaining or destroying their way of life .
Economic Parity: Current land use legislation does not recognize this underlying reality of income disparity, rendering it ineffective. Project will educate and inform the farmers about the successes of agricultural land trusts, their missions and the land use tools that are used to achieve the mission of protecting agricultural land in perpetuity. Restoring heritage rice and value-added product development will increase farmers’ income.

Vision

Restore best land use practices for Health of farmer, ecosystem and natural resources: Bali instituted a program 3 years ago to provide compost to farmers to go back to organic methods. The Project will encourage and provide ongoing technical assistance/education to farmers to transition from conventional chemical/fertilizer agriculture and return to organic farming. In addition, farmers will be encouraged to plant their heritage rices (black, red + traditional white which are nutritionally superior than the modern hybrids introduced in the 1970’s for yield.)
“Gotong Royong”- Working together is a time honored tradition in Balinese society. Utilize the strength of the subak (1000+ year old engineered irrigation cooperatives) recognized by Unesco as a unique + democratically managed , operational water supply source. Sawah and Subak are integrally intertwined systems. In addition to this organization, Balinese society is efficiently run by banjars (village management). These traditional structures expedite matters transparently and issues inclusively. They will negotiate offers as a cooperative, providing a process of efficiency and sawah contiguousness which supports the success of organic farming and resource management.
Sustainable Balance of Tourism and Agriculture: Recognizing the reciprocity and dependency of quality based tourism and sawah and initiating a plan to implement . Tourists will no longer flock to Bali if the unique aesthetic and sacred practice of the sawah has been destroyed. At present it has also been shown that demand exists for high quality food products such as organic heritage rices/produce, and the tourist and expat communities will support premium prices . The Project will devise a chain of supply for the farmer of organic products to market or for value added products by partnering with social entrepreneurships currently existing.

Why Now?

TIMING - POLITICAL FORCES FINALLY ARE ACKNOWLEDGING THE PROBLEMS AND THE POLITICAL WILL SEEMS TO BE THERE.
MOMENTUM AND RECOGNITION FROM UNESCO DESIGNATION
THE CONCEPT AND REPLICATION OF U.S. LAND TRUST IS BEING INTRODUCED AND GARNERING SUPPORT.

ROLES

Start-up of Yayasan : Technical assistance from staff of both the Vermont Nature Conservancy and The Vermont Land Trust. The scope is Bali, an island the size of Delaware with a population of 4 million. Vermont and Bali are similar in small landmass+scale, easy access to governance + institutions and Bali + Vermont share a unique cultural cachet that is recognizable worldwide. Facing a similar problem that agrarian Vermont has been actively solving for 25 years ,Bali could succeed in restructuring its agricultural base by niche product development and marketing, just as Vermont has managed to do out of economic necessity and environmental degradation.

Technical Assistance in the form of: