Carol Warren

This essay explores the environmental politics of resort development in Bali in the 1990s. It will focus especially on the political and economic context and cultural discourses in which environmental issues have become embedded. The controversy surrounding the luxury resort development at Tanah Lot provides a watershed case study for exploring the social and ideological ground of emergent environmentalism and for tracing alignments between formal institutions, activist groups and the general public. The case reveals the changing relationship of peripheral provinces to the centre as Jakarta comes to exercise more pervasive political and economic influence, and the importance of the regional press in articulating resistance to the appropriation of local resources.