Jatiluwih Subak Rice Terraces — Tourism Revenue-Sharing for a UNESCO Cultural Landscape (Indonesia)

Jatiluwih, in Tabanan Regency, Bali, is part of the 'Cultural Landscape of Bali Province', inscribed by UNESCO in 2012 as a manifestation of the Tri Hita Karana philosophy expressed through the subak — Bali's community-managed, temple-linked irrigation cooperatives. Jatiluwih's terraces span roughly 600 hectares and are irrigated by Subak Jatiluwih, whose members regulate water sharing through weirs (empelan), tunnels and channels (telabah) under customary rather than purely technical rules.

The village charges tourists an entrance fee to view the terraces, and reporting from the Bali regional press (Bali Tribune) describes the collected funds being split roughly 35% to the desa dinas (administrative village), 39% to Desa Adat Jatiluwih (customary village) and 26% to Desa Adat Gunung Sari, with the stated intention that the money return to subak irrigation maintenance, farm production support and farmer welfare. A separate academic account of the scheme (Prasiasa & Widari, 2019, Journal of Asian Development) describes a different split of gross revenue — 20% to wages, and the remainder divided 50/50 between the Tabanan district government and the village administration — with pre-pandemic annual revenue reported at roughly Rp 10.8 billion, falling 78% to about Rp 2.35 billion during the COVID-19 downturn.

This is a genuine cautionary case: independent reporting (Teropong News, and the feature 'Subak Jatiluwih, Warisan dalam Ancaman' / 'Subak Jatiluwih, Heritage Under Threat', BaleBengong) documents subak farmers saying they have 'never had a share of the tourism ticket' and are 'just spectators', while irrigation channels are deteriorating from landslides and age. Both the funding-split figures and the farmers' complaints coexist in the record, suggesting that whatever share is nominally allocated to irrigation upkeep is not reliably reaching the farmers who maintain the terraces day to day, even as tourism operators report 20-40% revenue growth since the UNESCO listing.

As a nature-based, cultural-heritage practice, Jatiluwih demonstrates a real and long-running tourism-financed model for a living agricultural landscape, but the evidence available is mixed rather than reassuring: formal revenue-sharing percentages exist on paper, physical infrastructure decay and farmer exclusion are documented in the same period, and no independent audit of where the money actually goes was found in the sources reviewed.

Read the full analysis: https://balitribune.co.id/content/jatiluwih-ketika-pariwisata-bertumpu-pada-sawah-dan-kesejahteraan-petani