PROLINNOVA is envisaged as a learning network on
ways to promote local innovation in ecologicallyoriented
agriculture and natural resource management
(EA/NRM). The focus will be on learning from
and encouraging field activities that strengthen the
capacities of smallholders, livestock-keepers and
fisherfolk to adjust to changing conditions: to continue
to develop and adapt their own site-appropriate
systems and institutions of resource management.
The programme will build on existing experiences ¿
many pioneered by NGOs ¿ in agricultural research
and development (R&D) focused on promoting local
innovation. These experiences involve:
¿ discovering what farmers are doing in their own
informal experimentation and how they are
developing and testing new ideas to improve their
land use, and
¿ building on these initiatives: joint experimentation
with farmers to develop further these and other
techniques in a process of participatory innovation
development, linking local and outside knowledge