The Yunnan Environment Development Programme.

The Yunnan Environment Development Programme is a five-year technical cooperation project between the governments of the UK and China, designed to study the relationship between poverty and the environment. The paper describes the challenges of managing an international cooperation programme designed to facilitate innovation in China. It discusses techniques for facilitating change, such as responding to national initiatives, assisting with new demands from Beijing, working with the Chinese concept of ‘scientific developmentߣ, identifying champions of change, and implementing practical projects at the village level. The second part of the paper describes how these ‘change systems’ facilitated and enabled wider participation in project development and implementation and in policy review, better targeting of assistance to those most in need, and improved evaluation of individual interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]