Fungi and the Future: Policy and Practice for Sustainable Production and Conservation

In 1992, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) raised international awareness about the need for biodiversity conservation, sustainable resource use and issues of access and benefit sharing. With an estimated 1.5 million species, fungi are a very significant part of that diversity (Hawksworth, 2003), yet even macro-fungi have generally stayed ‘below the radar screen’ of policymakers, despite their ecological importance and multiple values.