In southern Bali there are plots that are still listed as rice fields in the paperwork, but the fields themselves are gone — water now covers them. Governor Wayan Koster said as much: the owner holds a land certificate, yet there is no land left underneath it.
The island's head named the reason plainly — abrasion, the erosion of the shoreline. The ocean has reached the land, and where rice shoots once grew there is now water.
The authorities hope to stop this with mangroves: planting them is shifting from an annual ceremony to a monthly task. Work to shore up the southern coast has been going on for several years.
The ocean is not the only reason the island is losing fields. About 700 hectares of farmland are given over to construction every year; Bali has 64,704 hectares of rice fields in total, and Koster links their decline to a threat to the subak system and to the food supply.
The authorities are tackling that side of the problem separately. In February, a provincial law took effect in Bali that restricts converting productive land to other uses and bans registering plots under nominee owners — the scheme foreigners have used for years to buy land. Violations carry not only administrative measures, up to the demolition of buildings, but criminal liability as well.
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