The People, Land Management and Environmental Change (PLEC) project is a largely farmer-driven demonstration project consisting of five ecosystem clusters and spread over eight countries: Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, China, Papua New Guinea and Brazil. PLEC was initiated in 1992 by the United Nations University (UNU) as an international collaborative programme of studies on the practices of small farmers in relation to environmental change. After review and revision of the design of the project, the project was relaunched in 1998 with United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as implementing agency, UNU as executing agency and with funding from the Global Environmental Facility (GEF).