Southeast Asia's idyllic islands buckle under tourism strain

[snoop1130]

Southeast Asia's idyllic islands buckle under tourism strain

By John Geddie and Amy Sawitta Lefevre

 

FILE PHOTO: Tourists walk amongst trash washed up on Kuta beach by seasonal winds, as workers attempt a clean-up in the background, on the Indonesian island of Bali February 15, 2016 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. REUTERS/Wira Suryantala/Antara Foto

 

SINGAPORE/BANGKOK (Reuters) - The six-month closure of the Philippine tourism island of Boracay for a revamp after the country's president branded it a "cesspool" reflects the growing pressures on beach resorts across Southeast Asia as visitor numbers surge.

 

(Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2uThVRw)

 

Tourism experts say the region's infrastructure is buckling under record visitor numbers, especially as more Chinese holiday abroad, and expect more drastic measures to come.

 

Airports have become chaotic, hotels are being thrown up hastily with little regard for safety and sanitation, tropical beaches are strewn with garbage and coral reefs are dying.

 

Thailand already has plans to shut its famous Maya Bay in the Phi Phi islands for four months this summer, while an environmental group is calling for urgent government action to tackle a "crisis" on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali.

 

"Many out-of-control destinations across Asia will need clean-ups," said Brian King, associate dean of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. "These may come from government, or industry or from NGO-driven community action. The danger is that little happens until the crisis point is reached."

 

He added: "Boracay is not the first and won't be the last closure."

 

Airlines have already started to cut back flights to Boracay, which had 2 million visitors last year, with the largest foreign contingents coming from China and South Korea, ahead of its closure on April 26. [nL4N1RI1ZZ]

 

The Philippines, which had record visitor numbers last year after three years of double-digit growth, estimates the Boracay closure could reduce full-year GDP by 0.1 percent. [nL4N1RI1ZZ]

 

It is also planning to inspect the beach resort of Puerto Galera, on the island of Mindoro, and is already looking at the resorts of El Nido and Coron, in Palawan province, where an influx of tourism and rapid development has put infrastructure under strain.

 

But rival tourist hotspots around the region are not all rubbing their hands at the prospect of the extra revenue from the redirected tourist traffic.

 

Kanokkittika Kritwutikon, the head of the Tourism Authority of Thailand's Phuket office, said the island was at "stretching point", particularly its airport, which has undergone a number of upgrades in recent years to try to cope with overcapacity.

 

"Our policy is to try to spread tourism around" from Phuket to "secondary destinations that are less well-known," said Kanokkittika. "Apart from guests arriving by plane to Phuket we also have boats coming in, including cruises, so you can imagine how many tourists come through Phuket."

 

The shutdown of Maya Bay in an attempt to salvage the area's coral reefs - which have been damaged by crowds of tourists and warmer temperatures - follows the closure of 10 popular Thai diving sites in 2016 after a National Parks survey found bleaching on up to 80 percent of some reefs.

 

Pattaya, south of Bangkok, serves as another cautionary tale.

 

An influx of western tourists from as far back as the 1960s, when American soldiers came on leave from the Vietnam war, and a construction boom in the 1990s transformed it from a picturesque fishing village to a town known for its seedy nightlife and high crime rate.

 

Thailand's tourism ministry expects 37.55 million tourists this year, up from a record 35 million in 2017, of which 9.8 million were from China.

 

SHUTDOWNS "TOO LATE"

 

Benjamin Cassim, a tourism lecturer at Temasek Polytechnic School of Business in Singapore, said the closures of Boracay and Maya Beach could become "test cases" and will be closely monitored by other countries with popular beach resorts.

 

A non-profit group in Indonesia has been calling on the government to tackle what it calls an "environmental crisis" in Bali, the country's most popular tourist island, which saw more than 5.5 million visitors last year. 

 

Indonesian authorities have long faced criticism for allowing unplanned developments that have swallowed up rice fields with golf courses and villas on Bali. Its beaches are regularly strewn with plastic washed up from the ocean during certain months of the year.

 

Nonetheless, President Joko Widodo has been trying to promote creation of 10 "new Balis" in other parts of the scenic Indonesian archipelago. 

 

"Environmental conditions in Bali are now increasingly degraded," said I Made Juli Untung Pratama of WALHI, the Indonesian Forum for Environment.

 

"The culprit is the construction of massive tourism accommodation, without a proper regard to Bali's environment. The massive development of tourism accommodation has caused the environmental crisis in Bali."

 

Shutdowns such as the one on Boracay are not a new phenomenon. Back in 2004, Malaysian authorities shut all hotels on the island of Sipadan, known for having some of the best scuba diving in the world, to help protect its eco-system and subsequently restricted tourist numbers to the island.

 

But some say these extreme actions often come too late, and a more sustainable solution is needed across the region.

 

"Proactive environmental protection is a far more effective approach than reactive environmental protection," said Matt Gebbie, an analyst from Horwath HTL Indonesia, a tourism consultancy.

 

"You can't revive coral reefs and eroded beaches and degraded forests in six months," Gebbie said. "Proactive protection is essential for the long term sustainability of resort destinations."

 

(Reporting by John Geddie and Dewey Sim in SINGAPORE; Neil Jerome Morales and Martin Petty in MANILA; Amy Sawitta Lefevre in BANGKOK; and Cindy Silviana and Tabita Diela in JAKARTA; editing by Philip McClellan)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-4-6

 

[Samui Bodoh]

Hey Thailand!

 

Why don't you start with repairing the garbage incinerator on the island of Samui? The local government has been simply piling up rubbish for several years and recently unveiled a 'new plan' for the trash; they plan to put a tarp over it.

 

Clean up Koh Samui now!

 

 

 

Edited April 6, 2018 by Samui Bodoh
Lack of coffee and general anger

[islandguy]

Whose well water is this seeping into?

[Lungstib]

I must own up to having spent 30 years in the adventure tour business. I watched the destruction stupidy known as "development" from Kathmandu to Kuta and Komodo. Roads were created up and into volcanic craters, open land and palm trees were shunted aside for hotels, shopping malls and money changers. Beaches I visited off Thailands southern coast lost their corals, then their trees and finally their clean water. The only criteria was getting more money. Having witnessed such devastation I have since planted hundreds of trees and encouraged a reduction in waste. Thailand still hasn't realized it yet but the writing is on the wall for its tourism because it only encourages "mass" (and mess) not sustainable.

[overherebc]

Mass tourism by it's nature eventually destroys the area.

What's the cure? I wish I knew.

Even Everest now needs clean ups every year to get rid of crap dropped everywhere.

I flew in the face of family ideas when I was 19.  Same company that mother, father and brother worked for all their lives, and travelled.

Saw places where you could sleep on the beach, safely, 15 years ago, in Thailand, but have never gone back because it would totally destroy the memories I have.

As I said what is the 'fix'

I wish I knew.

[thaibeachlovers]

If, as the OP implies, Chinese masses are the main problem, surely they could just limit the number of them allowed in at any one time for ''tourism"?

 

Anyway, this is obviously ( and has been obvious to any that wanted to see for decades ) a locally caused disaster due to greed. Any easily reached lovely beach in LOS was destroyed long ago as the concrete plague spread along Thailand's coasts.

The answer is simple, and entirely in the hands of those in charge. Tourists in the main don't care about the environment, and will pay to stay anywhere as long as its got a pool and they can get a tan to show their friends back home. Tourists don't give permits to build hotels in inappropriate places, nor do they construct the hotels, or the airports, or litter everywhere, or dump garbage and industrial waste at sea, or overfish the sea, or anchor on coral reefs.

[sammieuk1]

Yes but how many dog ends did they find and how many jars filled is the burning question and answer.

[Cadbury]

3 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

Southeast Asia's idyllic islands buckle under tourism strain

Nothing will stop it. It is called money and greed. Stuff the ecology!

[Anak Nakal]

Why no clean up?

It is ugly ugly ugly!

[wwest5829]

5 minutes ago, Anak Nakal said:

Why no clean up?

It is ugly ugly ugly!

Yes, ugly but ugly is not the issue. Replacement of containers with biodegradable materials, sufficient waste containers along the beach and then the littering fines would go a long way toward helping the issue of human waste.

[Ulic]

Nothing to do with tourism. Everything to do with government corruption and lack of

investment in infrastructure to clean up and properly dispose of garbage.(high-temperature

incineration) If no tourist turned up that garbage would still be washing ashore. Most tourists

do not litter, it is the locals.

[Samui Bodoh]

4 hours ago, wwest5829 said:

Yes, ugly but ugly is not the issue. Replacement of containers with biodegradable materials, sufficient waste containers along the beach and then the littering fines would go a long way toward helping the issue of human waste.

Respectfully, the post above may assist in your beautifying your neighbourhood (slightly), but in terms of dealing with the issue it is woefully inadequate. The only element of value is the movement towards containers with more biodegradable materials; that is a good thing.

 

As my user name might suggest, I am quite familiar with Koh Samui as well as being very familiar with the situation on Bali. These two islands share a common problem with regards to waste management, namely Governance. Bad, terrible Governance. Truly, really awful, Governance.

 

The basic problem for Bali is that huge amounts of waste have been simply tossed into the sea for years and years and years (not only from Bali itself) and at certain times of the year when the currents and wind are going in the correct direction, it is "out of sight, out of mind". Unfortunately for Bali's tourism industry, not to mention the country of Indonesia and humanity itself, at other times of year the waste is pushed ashore on the different islands resulting in the vile, disgusting mess noted in the photo above. The core issue here is that waste is dumped rather than treated, and as the waste is not treated properly it simply comes back more disgusting and gross than when it left.

 

On Koh Samui, the problem is a little different. The island actually had (has?) a good incinerator to properly deal with the huge amount of garbage generated by a mass tourism industry, but it broke down... 5 years ago? (I forget the exact time) and hasn't been repaired. The end result of that breakdown and the lack of repair(s) has meant that for the last five years or so, Koh Samui has simply been piling its ever-increasing garbage on to semi-secluded sites and... er... ahem... hoping for some kind of miracle to deal with it? Sorry, I do not know what the authorities expected to happen, so I can't really comment. BTW, it is a similar story on Koh Tao, but it seems like someone accidentally set the dump on fire; perhaps a resident of KT could expand on the story. This is not to say that nothing has happened on either Bali or Koh Samui; there actually have been some efforts and actions taken to deal with the issue, but to be blunt, not nearly enough. Both islands have made serious efforts to reduce the amount of waste generated and I think both have actually achieved some results, just not enough of them.

 

The core issue here is one of Governance. Reduced to its most simple form, if you are going to have a mass tourism industry, that industry is going to produce huge amounts of waste and that waste needs to be dealt with.

 

That is an issue for government.

 

And it isn't being dealt with properly.

 

Government(s) in Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, and elsewhere; if you want to make money off of mass tourism, build/maintain and/or upgrade facilities to deal with the effects. 

 

Or...

 

Suffer catastrophic environmental damage and the (eventual) loss of the industry.

 

 

Edited April 7, 2018 by Samui Bodoh
Lack of coffee and general anger

[BEngBKK]

Thainess
No Need to clean up...

When we get reborn in next life we do not bring anything with us....
 

Edited April 7, 2018 by BEngBKK