The justification, aims, activities and expected outputs of the proposed programme on ¿Promoting
Local Innovation in Ecological Agriculture and Natural Resource Management¿ (PROLINNOVA) can
be found in the short information sheet (Oct. 2001) in the annex to this paper and in the longer
concept paper on the website of the NGO Committee of the CGIAR (www.ngoc-cgiar.org). In
essence, PROLINNOVA seeks to strengthen the capacities of rural people and local agricultural
research and development services to engage in participatory research that yields site-appropriate
improvements in ecological agricultural and natural resource management (EA/NRM) in resourcepoor
areas. It seeks to develop local innovation capacities through strengthening local research
partnerships. The focus in this paper is on how PROLINNOVA differs from conventional partnerships
for research and development (R&D) and how this creates particular challenges in trying to
formulate a global partnership programme.