PPI is a network of ethnoscientists working with local communities around the globe.  In any given country, PPI may work at different scales - from the local community to the policy level.  Also, many PPI programs span multiple countries or regions.  Click on a program link below to find out more about PPI 's current projects underway in that country.

North America

• PPI's Conservation & Managed Habitats program is working with local communities to develop guidelines and protocols for the sustainable harvest of mescal, a culturally and economically important plant in southwestern Mexico.  PPI is also working in the Yucatan region of Mexico on sustainable harvesting of timber NTFPs and developing products that will encourage conservation.
• PPI's Knowledge Exchange program has written and produced manuals on nontimber forest products found in Mexico and community forest management in Mexico.
• PPI's Policy & Trade program has developed an analysis of the laws and policies regulating the harvest, management and trade of Mexican NTFPs.
  

South America

• PPI's Cultural Resources and Rights program is working with the Ese Eja on the use of digital mapping and video technology to document and uphold knowledge and rights linked to their cultural landscapes and ancestrally occupied lands.
• PPI's Knowledge Exchange program produced a health manual with Ese Eja from four communities. The manual aims to strengthen the internal capacity of the Ese Eja in Peru and Bolivia to deal with their health issues, as well as other problems linked to rapid social and ecological change.

• PPI's Knowledge Exchange program works with local groups and communities to create innovative information materials in accessible formats for non-literate rural peoples as well as for resource managers.  Some of these materials include the book, Frutíferas e Plantas Úteis na Vida Amazônica, about medicinal plants found in the Amazon. The program also works with local farmers to identify and map valuable forest species that might otherwise be overexploited or underutilized.
  

Africa

• PPI's Knowledge Exchange program is working with the Limbe Botanic Garden and local NGOs People Earthwide and FOREP to help indigenous and migrant communities bolster traditional knowledge and practices as part of alternative livelihoods strategies around Mt. Cameroon.
  

• PPI's Conservation & Managed Habitats program is working with local groups to deliver training related  to high value plant species from dry forests and agroforestry systems in Namibia. 
• In Southern Africa, PPI's Policy & Trade program has conducted an analysis of policies and laws for southern African NTFPs including four southern African plants widely traded in global, regional and local markets: devil's claw, marula, rooibos tea and Hoodia spp. and a case study of kiaat or African/wild teak, a valuable hardwood species in the dry forest of eastern and southern Africa.
  

• PPI's Health & Habitats program is supporting research that is documenting the links between forest resource use, ethnomedical practices and sustainable harvest needs.
  

• PPI's Conservation & Managed Habitats and Health & Habitats programs work with the Keystone Foundation, an Indian NGO based in the Western Ghats.  PPI engages in mentoring and knowledge exchange with Keystone, as well as delivering field courses on ecological monitoring and case studies.
  

• PPI's Conservation & Managed Habitats program works with Indonesian NGO Yayasan Pecinta Budaya Bebali (YPBB) and the Threads of Life Foundation by providing technical support and training so that local weavers can sustain their traditional dye sources. 

• PPI's Knowledge Exchange program is working on a children's book for schools and botanic gardens that ties in Javanese legends with plant use and lore.
  

• PPI is working through our Knowledge Exchange program to produce a manual on the economic values and sustainable harvest of mushrooms and fungi.
  
• With the Kunming Institute of Botany in China, PPI's Conservation & Managed Habitats program will develop a practical Chinese language manual for the ecologically sustainable harvest of wild mushrooms and fungi.  The guidelines will be presented in a form useful to local people and foresters.