Does everyone speak English?

Now, more than ever, the ‘eye-in-the-sky’ needs to work with the ‘grunt-on-the-ground’. This is
not just a matter of ground-truth checks on accuracy of remote mapping. For biodiversity
forecasts, of abundance, threats and restoration for species and systems, one needs to map not
only ground cover, but soil and water quality and content, not to mention individuals of small
species. Beneficial activities at local community and citizen level are needed too, as well as
guidance and motivation from above. This will require engagement and love of nature as well as
the support of governments that enable services from nature and do not ignore climate change.
Encouraging benefits at local level, and linkage with guidance or imagery from above, requires
simple communication and for conservation chores to become fun. It requires conservation
communication networks for the 80% in the world who do not speak English. Ideas for
transacting local knowledge as an enjoyable engagement were developed in a Framework 7
project to design a Transactional Environmental Support System but considered too challenging
socially. This verdict stimulated multilingual networking in the civic sector, leading to 10-
language www.sakernet.org (2014) and 23-language www.perdixnet.org (2017) for UNEP and
NGOs, before 43-language www.naturalliance.org was launched for IUCN in 2019. A new
Horizon project is now addressing issues of social motivation for engagement with such systems
in a project for A PROactive approach for COmmunities to enAble Societal Transformation which
is running from November 2023 for 3 years. PRO-COAST (project 101082327) brings together 20
partners from 14 countries to develop, apply and validate an innovative socio-ecological
framework for the study of coastal ecosystem dynamics for the benefit of the people most
exposed to risk deriving from biodiversity loss. Starting in 9 case studies across Europe, it will
develop scaled-up multilingual networking for much wider areas along coasts and inland, using
the global-with-local information networking developed by European Sustainable Use Group.