Semarang City Diplomacy in Environmental Issues

This article aims to analyze Semarang's city diplomacy in solving environmental problems. Cities have an increasingly large role to play in this globalization era due to complex global issues, especially environmental issues. Cities are also having difficulty dealing with globalization due to the speed of population growth, economic pressures, excessive land use, and the increasing use of motor vehicles that release pollutants into the air. To address these issues, cities around the world are doing their best to find cooperative solutions through diplomacy. In addition, many national capitals cannot handle multiple tasks and, therefore, need to delegate some of their burden to other cities. In line with these objectives, this study utilizes an exploratory and descriptive qualitative research method, focusing on Semarang's diplomacy efforts. This study found that the Semarang city government has been perceived as an institution with clear political objectives that is fully committed to the practice of city diplomacy to engage directly, albeit in a limited way, in multilateral and bilateral international cooperation to find solutions to its environmental problems. The city government is no longer seen as an object of implementation of program plans formulated at the central level but also has the opportunity to formulate strategic plans or bottom-up procedures based on the needs of local communities and the suitability of the model with environmentally sustainable urban development.