The Semarang Environmental Agenda: a stimulus to targeted capacity building among the stakeholders

Recently, a sustainable development action plan was prepared for the city of Semarang, Indonesia. An essential component of this action plan was the building up of an effective partnership among the diverse stakeholders to ensure their commitment. Such an approach in which the city's stakeholders are actively involved in decision making was new for Semarang. This paper describes the roles and attitudes of the different stakeholders in the development of the action plan, and the complex and difficult process to forge partnerships between them. The paper explores the constraints faced during this participatory process, and suggests that there is a need to build the capacity of all stakeholders involved — local government, civil society and the private sector — so that they will be able to play their envisaged respective roles better.