ow SEED, a new awards scheme, is encouraging innovative local projects, supported by North-South partnerships that benefit social and economic development and the environment. SEED - which stands for Supporting Entrepreneurs for Environment and Development - particularly supports solutions that blend modern and traditional technologies and emphasize the sharing of human, financial and natural resources.

Pioneered by IUCN (the World Conservation Union), UNEP and the United Nations Development Programme, with support from the governments of Germany, the United States, Norway, Britain and the Netherlands, the UN Global Compact and the reinsurance company Swiss Re - SEED gives award-winning projects a customized package of support including mentoring, field trips, help getting funds, local links and international exposure.

Here are two finalists and two winners from this year.

Dr Tony Simmons, ICRAF

Many soaps and spreads, such as margarine, on shop shelves around the world trace their origins to oil from the seeds of the pineapple-sized fruits from Allanblackia trees that grow wild in Africa's tropical forests. But often local people do not know the trees' value.

Now communities are to be encouraged to harvest the seeds and plant new trees though a partnership between organizations in Nigeria and the Netherlands. The project - involving Unilever Research and Development and Oxfam, both in the Netherlands, and the local groups Friends of the Earth Nigeria, the Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation - will provide sustainable incomes and combat deforestation. Village organizers will manage the harvesting of the seeds and oversee their transport to a local crushing company that will extract the oil. Unilever will then buy it, guaranteeing long-term demand and fair prices.

J. Griesbach

Juicy, delicious mangoes contain more pro-vitamin A than any other tropical fruits. But, of course, they are only ripe for a short time each year. Much of the perishable fruit goes to waste before it can be eaten.

A new venture called VitAngo (for Vitamin A from Mangoes) is trying to turn this brief overabundance into a lasting source of nutrition and income in parts of Kenya, where women and young children are particularly afflicted by blindness and other disabilities related to Vitamin A deficiency. The World Agroforestry Centre, the Lake Victoria Schools Agroforestry and Environmental Education Network, the Kenya Organization for Environmental Education and the Kenya Youth and Community Development Programme have teamed up to promote earlier- and later-ripening varieties, help local people preserve mangoes by drying the fruit in the sun and train them in launching small enterprises to sell the dried mangoes.

T. Vandenbosch

SRI Rice Global Marketing Partnership

Rice feeds half the world's people, but those who grow it often get little for their efforts, receiving low prices for their crops and having to pay increasing amounts for modern pesticides and fertilizers - which can also damage health and the environment. But a new system of intensive cultivation promises to benefit both the farmers who adopt it and the land they cultivate.

Northern and Southern organizations - The Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development, Centre d'Etudes et de Developpement Agricole Cambodgien, National Federation of Kolo Harenas and Oxfam Community Aid Abroad - are promoting it to small farmers in Cambodia, Madagascar and Sri Lanka. Seedlings are widely spaced in a square grid pattern, then regularly moistened, drained and weeded, and nurtured with composted fertilizer. These resource-efficient practices have increased crop yields by 50 to 100 per cent and produced healthier, higher-quality rice that can be sold at a higher price - while saving water and improving the soil.

UNEP/Bishwa R. Shakya

Seabuckthorn, which grows throughout the Himalayas, is something of a wonder plant. Its berries yield highly nutritious juices and oils used in cosmetics and traditional medicine. Its leaves also have medicinal uses and provide fodder for livestock. And, perhaps even more importantly, their big, complex root systems bind soil to the fragile mountain slopes, cutting erosion in the monsoon rains by up to 30 per cent.

Mountain communities are being encouraged to cultivate the plants by a partnership of the international Himal Asia Foundation Tibetan cooperatives, Tribhuvan University in Nepal and the University of Applied Sciences in Germany. Three nurseries for them were opened in 2003, and others are to follow. Already Nepal's only hospital for reconstructive surgery has used the berry oils from the project, which is also looking at ways of exporting its products for use in juices, teas, other medicinal remedies and cosmetics internationally.

UNEP/S. Ching