Mycopreneurs and the UN Sustainable Development Goals

When I first started the Mycopreneur Podcast, the north star of the project was to platform fungi entrepreneurs around the world who are actively designing and creating a more regenerative future with a little help from our mycelial allies.

The potential applications of fungi technology are still largely unrecognized and untapped from my perspective - a lot of humanity’s most pressing problems may be solved if we achieve a critical mass of humans who invest in learning about and collaborating with fungi.

Mycopreneurs around the world have been designing a more intelligent and regenerative future at scale for some time now -

Just look at Ecovative creating mycelium-based packaging and securing contracts with major international corporations like Ikea and Dell; or MycoWorks producing mycelium leather and partnering with Adidas, lululemon, and other renowned global fashion brands. NASA is exploring mycotectural design and the possibility of building bases on Mars and the moon out of fungi.

The list goes on, and on, and on - and it’s not just Fortune 500 companies, global luxury brands and government agencies that are investing major resources into engineering sustainable design by leveraging fungi; I’d argue that as a global society, we have entered the ‘era of the mushroom’ at large.

Global superstar Björk released an ‘ode to mushrooms’ with her stunning 2022 album Fossora ; psilocybin and functional mushroom microdoses, chocolates and gummies have absolutely flooded the U.S., Canada, and Europe - and startups around the world are exploring ‘mycoremediation’ to clean up oil spills, eat plastic, and generally decarbonize the planet. One need only look at KÄÄPÄ Biotech in Finland to see how mycological biotech can be applied to forest management and carbon sequestration at scale.

We’ve barely started to scratch the surface of what mushrooms can do yet. As any reasonably intelligent person who has taken a focused, solo macrodose of psilocybin mushrooms should be able to tell you - fungal intelligence is arguably far more advanced than that of human intelligence. From my perspective, it behooves one to learn to communicate with such an advanced intelligence, and then get out of your own way.

It’s my hypothesis that virtually every single one of the 17 United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals can be meaningfully addressed by leveraging the power of fungi and design.

I was actually producing a multimedia project with one of the UN’s partner organizations focused on these SDG’s when I started recognizing the significant overlap between what mycopreneurs were already independently doing, and what the SDG’s were designed to achieve.

A good example of how a single mycopreneur can implement radical community change in accordance with the UN SDG’s for a more regenerative and equitable future is Josephine Nakakande of Eco-Agric Uganda.

Josephine has taught over 500 critically vulnerable and abjectly impoverished women in Sub-Saharan Africa how to grow oyster mushrooms and increase their livelihoods from under $1 US per day to upwards of $15 per day while providing their families and communities with nutrient-dense and readily available food - which is grown on agricultural waste. The upstart capital required to turn each of the women she works with into a largely self-sufficient mycopreneur? Around $80 US.

The ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ effect from the mycopreneurial success stewarded over by Josephine has extended to the construction of new schools, gender equality, and many other aspects of the SDG’s for the region of Uganda she lives in. This is the power of fungi - they are broadly intersectional and can address each level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs if leveraged appropriately.

The mycopreneurs at Nuvedo in Bangalore, India, are another stellar example. With a population of over 1.4 billion people and counting, India could benefit tremendously from harboring the latent potential of fungal technology to feed it’s growing population and to create cleaner, safer cities in alignment with SDG goals #11 and #12.

The base principle of fungal ecology is balance - fungi act as a regulatory body and distribution network for resource allocation in an ecosystem. You can learn more about their role in an ecosystem by tapping into the resources available via Fungi Foundation.

The more we learn about fungi, the more we realize how many varied and actionable solutions they bring to the table for addressing the climate crises and helping to achieve a more equitable, regenerative and worthwhile future on this planet.

After many years of shouting from the rooftops about the benefits of fungi, I’ve largely pivoted into doing psychedelic satire - as many of you have probably noticed - and am riding this wave as it generates momentum and takes me to places I never imagined this podcast and media platform would go. I’m still deeply interested in platforming and supporting fungi entrepreneurs, and am always interested in exploring meaningful routes to doing so.

After all, what incentive do oil and plastic companies have to stop polluting if it turns out that mushrooms can just clean up the mess anyways?

I’m very interested in seeing where all this is headed, and while I while continue to unabashedly advocate for the adoption of mushrooms into lifestyles and design systems worldwide, I’m not naive to the distinct possibility that the hubris of humanity outweighs having even the most intelligent and advanced technologies at our fingertips.

My answer, then, is simply to keep learning about mushrooms, keep building with mycopreneurs, and to have a sense of humor about it all.