A new era of mycelium conservation could begin this month when the UK and Chile suggests that fungi should be placed alongside animals and plants as a separate area for environmental protection.
Mushrooms, mold, mildew, yeast and lichen will all be given enhanced status under the plan, which will be submitted to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) during the Police 16 meeting in Cali, Colombia, which opens on October 21.
The two governments will co-sponsor a “pledge for fungi conservation”, shared exclusively with the Guardian, calling for the “recognition of fungi as an independent kingdom of life in legislation, policy and agreements, in order to support their conservation and to adopt concrete measures that make it possible to maintain their benefits for ecosystems and people in the context of the triple environmental crisis.”
This refers to a growing body of evidence in which fungi play a crucial role restore landsequester a third of carbon of fossil fuel emissions, and plastic breaks down and polluting chemicals. Mycologists say that without fungi, most plants cannot live outside water and therefore life on Earth as we know it would not exist.
“This is the most important thing that has ever happened in the field of mushroom conservation,” said Giuliana Furcithe Chilean-British chief executive of the Fungi Foundationwhich is the driving force in the 3F initiativewhich aims to have “fungus” recognized alongside flora and fauna. Unlike those terms, the word funga is not Latin and was coined because it is morphologically similar.
“If this pledge is accepted by the CBD, it will introduce a new opportunity for decision-making, a new way of seeing,” Furci said. “Looking at nature without fungi is like trying to diagnose a disease without doing a blood test. Fungi is the expanse of life on earth. They make system ecosystems.”
The pledge states that humans have depended on fungi for thousands of years for the production, flavoring and preservation of food and medicine, noting that they are essential for bread, soy products, cheese, wine and beer, among many other uses. It calls on the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity to develop an agenda for the global conservation of macroscopic and microscopic fungi for ecological and human well-being.
Another one from the 3F campaign, Merlin Sheldrakea biologist and the author of the book Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futuresurged other countries to take advantage of what he called a historic opportunity.
“Fungi are largely invisible ecosystem engineers that underpin the regenerative capacity of the living world,” he said. “Despite their many key roles in regulating the climate and maintaining global biodiversity, fungi have been overlooked in most governmental and legislative frameworks. It is imperative that we make progress on this challenge, both to combat the destruction of fungal communities, which accelerates both climate change and biodiversity loss, and to make it easier to work with fungi to help respond to the many urgent crises we face.”
Chile was a pioneer in fungal recognition and conservation. National laws oblige companies and government bodies to include fungi in environmental impact assessments for projects. If risks are found, they must be listed and mitigated.
Chile’s Minister of the Environment, Maisa Rojassaid fungi were a unifying element that brought together the issues of climate, nature and pollution. “They help with all three,” she said. “Recognizing fungi helps a lot in understanding how life works holistically. We hope the CBD can adopt this and advise countries to include fungi in national laws and strategies.”
The issue also overlaps with the growing campaign to strengthen the legal rights of natureaccording to César Rodríguez-GaravitoA Colombian jurist who heads the Earth Rights Research & Action Clinic at New York University. His organization joined the 3F initiative three years ago to try to close what it saw as a gap in international and domestic law. “Underinclusion is a matter of justice,” he said. “Fungi must be included in the CBD’s legal framework of biodiversity. We feel there is a sense of common purpose on this issue, which is big but not divisive.
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The initiative is backed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. The latter’s director of science, Alexandre Antonelli, said the promise was well proven and well justified: “Fungus conservation has not received any attention from the public, so there is no money for it anywhere. Only 0.4% of fungal species have been assessed for vulnerability, but the role of fungi is essential in food security, medicine, ecosystem maintenance and so many other ways. The science is clear, but it is a matter of social recognition. We need to bring fungi into the discussion.”
Kew is home to the world’s largest fungiarium, a 1.25m collection of pressed, dried specimens from around the world that are now undergoing DNA sequencing to determine toxic risks and medical benefits. This analysis confirmed that fungi are an independent kingdom, although closer to animals than plants.
Antonelli said this has only scratched the surface, as scientists have described less than 10% of the fungal species thought to exist in the world. “Funga are the next frontier of diversity science,” he said. “They produce so many different molecules. They are an absolutely incredible but largely understudied system.”
The solution to future pandemics may be found in this form of life. Antonelli said that mankind ignored the green mold on bread for thousands of years until Alexander Fleming realized this genus of fungus, Penicilliumcan be used as an antibiotic, since then it has saved countless millions of lives. Filamentous fungi are the basis for statins, which lower cholesterol. The benefits of another group of fungi, yeast, have been known for much longer.
“When you drink your glass of beer on Friday, remember that you have fungi to thank for it,” Antonelli said.
