Evaluating the management plan of Bali Cultural Landscape from the local community's perspective

Abstract

In 2012, the Subak landscape of Bali was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List after undergoing years of application process. Today, many rice field owners are concerned that the World Heritage status restricts them from improving their economic welfare as selling or converting rice fields within the area of World Heritage Site is prohibited by the government. With the increasing costs of farming, and without the certainty of stable and sufficient income, many rice field owners have begun to consider abandoning or leasing their lands in order to be able to work full time in other sectors. Learning from a fieldwork exercise carried out in Bali, this chapter will discuss meanings and values of heritage sites from the local community’s perspective. It will explore the local community’s perceptions and expectations towards the World Heritage status and how the current management strategies are inadequate for protecting the landscape’s sustainability. Several evaluations regarding inconsistent implementations of the management plan of Bali Cultural Landscape will be raised alongside several discussions of its implications on the heritage site and the local community. The in-depth case study analysis proposed in this chapter aims to offer a deeper understanding of the discrepancies observed among various stakeholders in terms of heritage values and the impact of those discrepancies on the management of the site.