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Luxury hotels inside a huge gated community in Nusa Dua, which controls access to the beach and the surrounding amenities.
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Villas, hotels, and businesses have steadily replaced rice fields in the quest to service the island's massive reliance on tourism. In 2019, over 6 million foreign tourists visited the island.
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Luxury hotels near Ubud are carefully designed to harmonize with the surrounding rice fields and landscape, but major problems of water usage and economic benefits from such projects remain.
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Half-finished developments dot the island, this one in Uluwatu.
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Development and speculation abounds in hidden copses of trees, ravines and farmland far from the dense bustle of the road network and prying eyes in Bali.
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Bali's uneven water usage mirrors other resort destinations, such as Zanzibar.
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Personal swimming pools at a resort in Uluwatu.
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Stunning access-controlled luxury beachfront hotels dot the coast, including the Apurva Kempinski, where the G20 meetings were held in 2022.
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Rice terraces are the defining characteristic of the Balinese landscape, carefully managed over hundreds of years in a system of water rights and coexistence. This system is steadily being disrupted as more and more development occurs on the island.
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Development in the fields near Seminyek.
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Unfinished development in Uluwatu.
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"Parq Ubud", a development marketing itself as the "city of the future" takes shape near Ubud. The development's website bills itself as a "futuristic idea of a place where people with common values and interests come together."
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Villas being built amongst the rice fields, Canggu.
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Ubud, sunset.
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White herons flying over rice fields near Seminyek.