Built environment from the ancient Bali: The Balinese heritage for sustainable water management

Custom and tradition played essential roles in developing the built environment among the Balinese Hindu society for centuries. The wisdom in managing the environment has passed through generations, as demonstrated by some ancient remnants and old Balinese inscriptions. We observed that glorifying the mountains in this society has long been a part of protecting the hydrologic cycle. This practice even started in the pre-Hindu era, as shown by sacred megalithic features adjacent to the natural reservoir, water spring, and mountainous forest. At some point, the behavior has successfully passed through times and even developed into a more complex socio-cultural system such as subak. Nevertheless, Balinese society is now facing the threat of hydrological disasters, primarily due to a rapid change in land use. Here, we describe the importance of revealing the value behind the ancient Balinese water-management system to gain people's resilience and sustainability. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) was used to measure the sustainability index and the leverage factors affecting water tradition in Bali. We reveal that the inheritance of the Balinese people's water management tradition is generally weak in each dimension. The socio-cultural dimension score is relatively high, with a sustainability score of 71.11%, which signifies that the society still trusts their culture of water resources management to protect nature. However, the economy and ecology dimensions' score low, with sustainability scores of 56.12 and 63.34%, respectively, indicating the need for improvement in economic matters through the policy strategy. Moreover, our study also suggests that the noble value of the cultural heritage related to the water management system needs to be revitalized and disseminated to the public. Hence, the implication is not limited to conserving the natural environment and cultural heritage. It also provides a reference for the current society regarding a built environment in harmony with sustainability principles.