It becomes easier for people to engage with local issues of sustainability when they can regard the area where they live as being special. This is the idea behind UNESCO's designation of special areas called Biodiversity Reserves. But any area can become special if the people who live there believe it to be so.

Therefore COSMOS accepts that UNESCO's principles of community engagement can be applied anywhere.

Cosmos aims to help re-connect people with the environment by explaining how conservation management at all levels maintains the intrinsic value and public benefits of ecosystems as a whole. It answers the practical question of how we manage and conserve the environment, not whether to do so.