The island of Bali is famous as a lush tropical paradise with fertile volcanic soils, inhabited by farmers who are also artists and creators of colourful rituals, a complex irrigation system and a rice terrace landscape that is both ecologically sustainable and stunningly beautiful.

This beauty of daily life, agriculture and rituals has fascinated generations of tourists and anthropologists who interpreted the ‘perfect order’ (Lansing 2006) of Bali’s cultural landscape as manifesting a cosmology based on principles of balance and proportion between opposites, for example in the purifying as well as fertilising flow of ‘holy water’ along the cosmic axis between the volcanic mountain peaks and the sea. Indeed, water is so crucial for ritual practice that Balinese used to call their religion agama tirtha, ‘the religion of holy water’.

Elsewhere I have shown how these cosmological principles are embodied in the movements of Balinese ritual dances and the art of offerings (Hornbacher 2005), but they also inform Bali’s wet rice terraces and its complex irrigation system.

More recently, religious authorities and anthropologists have argued that this paradigm of cosmic harmony is at the core of Bali’s traditional eco‐philosophy, Tri Hita Karana – the three causes of wellbeing – which are harmony with gods, the land and humans.

But while this suggests that the ancient Balinese eco‐philosophy offers a solution to the global ecological crisis, investigation shows that the catchy term Tri Hita Karana (THK) is in fact a recent invention (Roth and Sedana 2015), and in any case it did not protect Bali from a serious ecological crisis of water‐related issues ranging from enormous pollution from plastic waste in the sea around Bali to the chemical and organic pollution of Balinese fresh water bodies, and culminating in a dramatically decreasing groundwater table due to the water‐intensive industrial agriculture of the green revolution and the rising water demands of mass tourism.

This has led not only to many waterborne diseases, but also to regular water shortages in the dry season, and to losses of harvests that threaten farmers’ very existence. Major factors contributing to the problem include mass tourism and industrial agriculture, but it is also aggravated by global climate change, which makes seasonal rainfall more unpredictable than ever.

But what are the implications for local climate activism?

I found it interesting that even though many of my Balinese interlocutors in a rural south Balinese village declared climate change a major problem – especially after Bali hosted the UN climate conference in 2007 – their ideas about the phenomenon differed remarkably from the scientific western paradigm. Many of them used the term to address practically all of the threatening consequences of a modern consumerist lifestyle, which on the one hand they found desirable but on the other hand found damaging to their own ideal of cosmic harmony. Some of them associated climate change with environmental damage in general, caused by human greed and materialism, and they condemned it as a symptom of the failure to maintain cosmic balance. From this perspective, climate change was a moral problem that would unavoidably lead to a cosmic cataclysm in which the current world would be destroyed (pralina) as a precondition for renewal. Climate change was thus discussed in terms of what I describe as a ‘moral’ rather than a ‘political’ ecology. This explains why the devastating tsunami that hit the coast of Sumatra in 2005 was also associated with climate change, just like the increasing religious fundamentalism and Islamist terror that threatened the interreligious harmony of Indonesian society.

In other words, and on the village level where I did most of my research, climate change was not inherently related to political action or protest but rather to a general ‘mood of crisis’ emerging from unresolved contradictions of modernisation, and discussed in terms of a local cosmology. This may change under the influence of global climate protests, but so far climate activism did not mobilise Balinese masses to take political action.

This does not mean that Balinese are not aware of environmental damage: Farmers complain about a dramatic decline of groundwater worsened by the effects of climate change like early or late rains. This destructive development began during the 1970s when the international airport was opened simultaneously with the forceful implementation of the ‘green revolution’ by the Indonesian government. To increase rice production, Balinese farmers were forced to adopt new high‐yielding rice varieties that need much more water than local varieties, and require large amounts of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. As a result, Balinese water bodies and ground water are heavily polluted with agrochemicals and so are human bodies, as pesticide tests in samples of mother milk suggest. Additionally, many rivers have dried up, and groundwater tables have declined – sometimes irreversibly in the coastal hotspots of tourism and urbanisation because of sea water intrusions into the hotel wells, which are drilled far too deep.

This water crisis on a tropical island famous for its lush vegetation and sacred springs is alarming and leads to conflicts between farmers and urban Balinese living in the island’s tourism centres who rely on water from the mountains, which is then not available for wet rice farming.

Thus, even though climate change was discussed in the villages where I did my research, this discourse was mainly related to the moral failures of modern life. Environmental activism, on the other hand, is focusing on the effects of tourism and agribusiness. There are several farmer activists advocating a return to forms of organic agriculture: for example, Chakra Widia, a specialist in permaculture, environmental engineering and ecological education, who teaches local farmers composting and organic methods of pest control, and includes western interns in his numerous programmes, as for example Bali’s international green schools. He also inspired the globally highly visible anti‐plastic activism of two Balinese‐Dutch teenage sisters, Melati and Ysabel Wijsen, who started their campaign against plastic in 2012, are climate protesters, are guests of TED talks, and in 2020 were even at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

One of the first Balinese environmental activists is Dr Ni Luh Kartini. A farmer, proponent of organic farming for all of Bali, and lecturer in agriculture at the university, for decades she has tried to raise the awareness of farmers and politicians with regard to water pollution, but with less impressive results than she had hoped. The economic pressures on farmers were and still are too strong, and the invisibility of pesticides allows them to repress its impact on their own health. Many of them are quite willing to sell their land for villas and tourism facilities, hoping that this will create new jobs for future generations. And while farmers adopted the THK philosophy that became a UNESCO‐certified world heritage in 2012, they are often victims of a ‘harmony’ principle that is both attributed to and instrumentalised against them – for example, when politicians force them to share their water with rich hotel managers in coastal areas in the name of ‘social harmony’.

Land is the farmer’s only capital in a global economy that commoditised Bali’s eco‐philosophy for private surpluses and forces them to decide whether to pay the next cremation ritual for their parents, a hospital treatment for a relative or school for their children, decisions that are often heartbreaking and contribute to the increasing number of suicides on the island of harmony and gods (Hornbacher 2013).

It is therefore perhaps no surprise that Bali’s most popular mass protest is a fight against more tourism that became famous under the banner ‘tolak reklamasi’: ‘fend off the land reclamation’ for a gigantic artificial shopping and hotel island in Benoa Bay that collides not only with a protected mangrove reserve but also with the cosmic confluence of rivers. This activism united all segments of Balinese society over recent years, ranging from priests to rock groups, and it integrated cosmological with environmental claims and ideas in a movement crystallising around the wish to limit economic growth and thus tourism. In Bali, this is a truly radical idea, and perhaps a starting point to finally take THK seriously not only ideologically but also politically.

巴厘岛是著名的郁郁葱葱的热带天堂，拥有肥沃的火山土壤，也是农民的居住地，他们也是艺术家和丰富多彩的仪式的创造者，复杂的灌溉系统和水稻梯田景观，既具有生态可持续性，又具有惊人的美丽。

日常生活，农业和仪式的美丽吸引了几代游客和人类学家，他们将巴厘岛文化景观的“完美秩序”（Lansing 2006）解释为体现了一种基于平衡和对立的比例原理的宇宙论，例如在净化过程中。以及沿着火山山峰和大海之间的宇宙轴施肥的“圣水”。事实上，水是如此重要的仪式的做法，巴厘岛的习惯称呼他们的宗教阿含tirtha，“圣水的宗教”。

在其他地方，我已经展示了这些宇宙学原理是如何在巴厘岛的仪式舞蹈和祭品的艺术中体现出来的（Hornbacher 2005），但它们也为巴厘岛的湿水稻梯田及其复杂的灌溉系统提供了信息。

最近，宗教当局和人类学家争辩说，宇宙和谐的范式是巴厘岛传统生态哲学“三圣卡拉娜”（Tri Hita Karana）的核心，这是幸福的三个原因，与神，土地和人类和谐相处。

但是，尽管这表明古老的巴厘岛生态哲学为解决全球生态危机提供了解决方案，但调查表明，引人注目的术语“三·希塔·卡拉纳（THK）”实际上是最近才发明的（Roth和Sedana，2015年）。并没有使巴厘岛免受与水有关的严重生态危机的影响，这些问题包括从巴厘岛周围海域的塑料废物造成的巨大污染到巴厘岛淡水水体的化学和有机污染，以及由于水而导致地下水位急剧下降的最终结果-绿色革命的集约型工业农业和大众旅游业对水的需求不断增加。

这不仅导致许多水传播疾病，而且导致旱季经常缺水，并造成威胁农民生存的收成损失。造成该问题的主要因素包括大众旅游业和工业农业，但全球气候变化也加剧了这一问题，这使得季节性降雨比以往任何时候都更加不可预测。

但是，这对当地的气候活动有何影响？

我发现有趣的是，尽管我在南部巴厘语乡村中的许多巴厘岛对话者都宣称气候变化是一个主要问题，尤其是在巴厘岛于2007年主办联合国气候会议之后，但他们对这一现象的看法却与西方科学范式截然不同。他们中的许多人用这个词来解决现代消费主义生活方式的几乎所有威胁性后果，一方面，他们认为这是可取的，但另一方面却破坏了他们自己的宇宙和谐理想。其中一些将气候变化与人类的贪婪和唯物主义造成的一般环境破坏联系在一起，他们谴责这种变化是无法维持宇宙平衡的一种征兆。从这个角度来看，pralina）作为续订的先决条件。因此，以我所说的“道德”而不是“政治”生态学来讨论气候变化。这就解释了为什么2005年席卷苏门答腊沿海地区的毁灭性海啸也与气候变化相关联，就像不断加剧的宗教原教旨主义和伊斯兰恐怖活动威胁着印尼社会的宗教间和谐一样。

换句话说，在我从事大部分研究工作的村庄一级，气候变化与政治行动或抗议并没有内在联系，而是与未解决的现代化矛盾产生的一般“危机情绪”有关，并在以下方面进行了讨论：当地的宇宙学。在全球气候抗议活动的影响下，这种情况可能会改变，但是到目前为止，气候行动主义并未动员巴厘岛群众采取政治行动。

这并不意味着巴厘岛人不了解环境破坏：农民抱怨由于早雨或晚雨等气候变化的影响，地下水急剧下降。这种破坏性的发展始于1970年代，当时国际机场在印度尼西亚政府强行实施“绿色革命”的同时开放。为了提高稻米产量，巴厘岛农民被迫采用比本地稻米需要更多水且需要大量化肥和农药的高产稻米新品种。结果，正如母乳样品中的杀虫剂测试所表明的那样，巴厘岛的水体和地下水受到农药的污染严重，人体也受到了污染。此外，许多河流已经枯竭，

热带岛屿上的水危机令人震惊，该岛以茂密的植被和神圣的泉水而闻名，令人震惊，并导致农民和居住在该岛旅游中心的巴厘岛居民之间发生冲突，他们依赖山区的水，而当时的湿稻无法耕种。

因此，即使在我研究过的村庄中都讨论了气候变化，但这种论述主要与现代生活的道德失败有关。另一方面，环境行动主义则侧重于旅游业和农业综合企业的影响。有几位农民活动家主张恢复有机农业形式：例如查克拉·维迪亚（Chakra Widia），这是永续耕种，环境工程和生态教育方面的专家，他向当地农民传授堆肥和病虫害防治的有机方法，并在他的众多研究人员中包括了西方实习生。计划，例如巴厘岛的国际绿色学校。他还激发了全球两个举世瞩目的反塑料运动，这两个巴厘荷兰少年姐妹Melati和Ysabel Wijsen于2012年发起了反对塑料运动，他们是气候抗议者，

Ni Luh Kartini博士是最早的巴厘岛环保主义者之一。一位农民，是整个巴厘岛的有机农业拥护者，也是大学的农业讲师，数十年来，她一直在努力提高农民和政治家对水污染的认识，但成效却不如她希望的那样。对农民的经济压力过去仍然很大，而且农药的隐形性使他们可以抑制农药对自身健康的影响。他们中的许多人都愿意出售自己的土地用于别墅和旅游设施，希望这将为子孙后代创造新的就业机会。尽管农民采用了THK理念，并在2012年成为了联合国教科文组织认证的世界遗产，

土地是农民在全球经济中唯一的资本，它使巴厘的私人剩余生态哲学商品化，并迫使他们决定是否为父母支付下一次火葬仪式，为亲戚支付住院治疗费用或为子女支付学费，通常令人心碎，并导致和谐岛和神灵岛上的自杀人数增加（Hornbacher，2013年）。

因此，巴厘岛最受欢迎的大规模抗议活动是与更多旅游业的斗争，这并不奇怪，该运动以“ tolak reklamasi”为名而闻名：“抵制土地开垦”是为了在贝诺瓦湾建造一个巨大的人工购物和酒店岛，而不会碰撞不仅拥有受保护的红树林保护区，而且还有河流的宇宙汇合处。近年来，这种行动主义将巴厘岛社会的各个阶层团结起来，从神父到摇滚团体，并将宇宙论与环境主张和思想融为一体，围绕着限制经济增长从而限制旅游业的愿望而运动。在巴厘岛，这是一个真正激进的想法，也许是最终在思想上和政治上认真对待THK的起点。