GREEN COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT BUSINESS MODEL TO RECOGNIZE SOLO GREEN CITY: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

This research aims to investigate how local government of Surakarta developing green businesses to realise Solo Green City, as the answer of environmental sustainability issue. We elaborate the Green Business Model as a strategy to enhance communities participation in  green projects.  Schaltegger et al. (2012) explained that  green business is a sistematical approach to develop both business and sustainable environment. We applied the qualitative method in this study. We did interview two groups of respondents, policy makers and green business practitioners. Policy makers are Regional Planning Agency (Bappeda) as macro planner and Environmental Agency and Agricurtural; Food Security and Fishery Agency as implementers. On the other hand, we interviewed businessmen of decorative plants, hidroponic community, organic vegetables village, and go green souvenirs sellers as practitioners. It can be concluded that from several green business activities,  the community empowerment is the most influential movement to establish Solo Green City. The success project such as Organic Vegetables Village in Mojosongo is the result from collaboration of NGO Rumah Zakat with local community. The project was supervised under Environmental Agency as pilot project of the climate villages. The model that we developed will be submitted to the local government as policy recommendation