The global organisation says it is time that fungi are recognised and protected equally with plants and animals
Mushrooms. Photo: iStock United Nations Biodiversity has urged people globally to use the word ‘funga’ whenever they say ‘flora and fauna’, in order to highlight the importance of fungi.
Fungi, along with Animalia (animals), Plantae (plants), Protista, Archaea/Archaebacteria, and Bacteria or Eubacteria form the six ‘kingdoms’ of biology.
“It is time for fungi to be recognised and protected on an equal footing with animals and plants in legal conservation frameworks #saytheirname,” UN Biodiversity said in an Instagram post on August 27, 2023.
“Language creates reality, and including the word “FUNGA” in your language is important. Whenever referring to the macroscopic diversity of life on Earth, we should use “flora, fauna and FUNGA”, and “animal, plants and FUNGI”,” it added.
This is not the first time when a request has been made to include fungi along with flora and fauna.
Two years ago, the Species Survival Commission (SSC) of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) announced that it would use “mycologically inclusive” (referring to fungi) language in its internal and public-facing communications (“fauna, flora and funga” and “animals, fungi and plants”) and to incorporate fungi in conservation strategies with rare and endangered plants and animals.
An article on the IUCN website dated August 3, 2021, which documented the development, noted:
There would be no life on Earth without fungi: the yeasts, molds and mushrooms that are critical to decomposition and forest regeneration, mammalian digestion, carbon sequestration, the global nutrient cycle, antibiotic medication, and the bread, beer and chocolate we consume. Trees would not be able to live on land without fungi.
This was echoed by UN Biodiversity in its August 27 post. It said:
By integrating “funga” into our day-to-day conversations, educational material, media and social media vocabulary, etc, we lay the groundwork for fungi to be protected on an equal footing as plants and animals. Just like mycelium, mycologically-inclusive language will spread unseen but profound, permeating public consciousness (and policy) to acknowledge fungi’s vital role in the grand web of life on and in Earth.
Similar efforts are on to use more environmentally-conscious language in other spheres such as conservation, for instance.
In a blog written exclusively for Down To Earth in October last year, Survival International, the organisation that works for the rights of indigenous peoples and uncontacted tribes, had noted that it is “essential to think about the words and concepts we use when writing or talking about environmental issues, because the violence and land grabs faced by millions of indigenous and other local people in the name of conservation stem in large part from these concepts”.
“That’s why Survival International, the organisation that supports tribal and indigenous peoples, has produced a new Guide to decolonise language in conservation. It confronts many familiar terms, and explains the hidden histories behind others,” the organisation had added.
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