1. Sustainable resource management: PPI collaborates with local experts, cooperatives, and communities to develop management protocols for plant resources of subsistence or commercial importance. Protocols are designed around traditional knowledge and ecological sciences, and are calibrated to satisfy conservation interests and local livelihood needs.
2. Ethnoecology master’s: PPI works with academic institutions to develop their master’s-level ethnoecology curriculum and teach short courses. In addition to building knowledge and skills, this program builds bridges between young scientists and local communities in their countries.
3. Returning results: All PPI projects produce materials based on field work in formats accessible and useful to local resource managers. This ensures that knowledge gathered is kept where it is most needed.
4. Policy development: this program assesses policies relevant to the local, national, and international use and trade of plant products, and make recommendations to improve the efficacy and equity of these regulatory instruments at the local level.
5. Cultural landscapes and indigenous resource rights: Local and indigenous groups often experience fragmentation and become alientated from their cultural and natural heritage as a result of external development, conservation or resource extraction interventions. PPI helps local peoples build internal capacities and retain their ties to the landscape by facilitating participatory processes and initiatives that secure, transmit, adapt, and apply traditional knowledge.
6. Health and Habitat: we work for effective primary health care through a better understanding of the links between people’s health, plant conservation, and resource management at multiple scales from the habitat level to harvest of plants providing food, insect repellents or herbal medicines.