AustLit

'Global biodiversity faces unprecedented challenges in the 21st century and beyond. Anthropogenic agitations now threaten to irreversibly destabilise the natural world. Despite precautionary urgings by the scientific community, the polarised moiety of environment adherents and dissidents prevails. The endurance or extirpation of species relies on both adaptability and intervention. This essay considers these pressing concerns by focusing on the role of fungi within wider ecosystems. The Kingdom Fungi is one group of sentient biota which understatedly drives ecosystem dynamics and the subsistence of larger organisms, yet whose members remain largely foreign to us. The essay explores the longstanding physical, cultural and historical inter-relationships between humans and fungi and their enduring role in human survival and development. Research indicates that fungi possess qualities which may well serve to ameliorate our errors of judgment and resulting ecological impacts yet paradoxically, the future of fungi could be imperiled by such human impacts. Two future scenarios are proposed and it is argued that if these diminutive organisms are as susceptible to environmental degradation and restructuring as flora and fauna, what prospects for perpetuity do our habitats face?'  (Publication abstract)

'The future isn’t what it used to be, that’s for sure. Eminent futurist Ziauddin Sardar summed up the situation under the banner of postnormal times. Here, in true Dickensian manner, he lays out the crisis for us:

'Welcome to postnormal times. It’s a time when little out there can be trusted or gives us confidence. The espiritu del tiempo, the spirit of our age, is characterised by uncertainty, rapid change, realignment of power, upheaval and chaotic behaviour. We live in an in-between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have yet to be born, and very few things seem to make sense. Ours is a transitional age, a time without the confidence that we can return to any past we have known and with no confidence in any path to a desirable, attainable or sustainable future. It is a time when all choices seem perilous, likely to lead to ruin, if not entirely over the edge of the abyss. In our time it is possible to dream all dreams of visionary futures but almost impossible to believe we have the capability or commitment to make any of them a reality. We live in a state of flux beset by indecision: what is for the best, which is worse? We are disempowered by the risks, cowed into timidity by fear of the choices we might be inclined or persuaded to contemplate (2010 p. 435).'  (Introduction)