How to save the worldA global journey into making our lives better…

The recent events in the gulf of Mexico are cause for terrible concern, both for the ecosystem and for the nearby populations who have seen their livelihood disappear in a matter of a few weeks. This only remind us how helpless we are in front of disasters and ecosystem collapse.

There is no magic solution and the fragile ecosystem of the gulf will take time to recover, if at all. However, here is a clue on how we could potentially help the recovery inland, and help save our world’s endangered environment.

This tool is natural, safe and inexpensive: we are talking about the amazing digesting power of mycelium. Mycelium is the name given to the root-like system which support mushrooms (In actual fact, mushrooms are the fruits of mycelia).

When the first humans arrived in the Philippines thousands of years ago they found a group of 7,000 islands remarkably rich in natural resources. The seas where inhabited by the globe’s most diverse communities, providing an abundant source of food throughout the year. The land was covered almost entirely by rain forest that provided them with food, building materials and seemingly everlasting supplies of clear, fresh drinking water.

Few countries in the world were originally more thoroughly covered by rainforest than the Philippines: Brazil has extensive savannah and brush, Indonesia has many dry islands, Kenya and Tanzania have only small patches of rainforest…

Because the sea around the Philippines is very deep, no path were open for wildlife to cross during ice ages, when the sea levels were lower. This resulted in a country that has more unique species acre for acre than anywhere else in the world. More than 510 species of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians exist nowhere else in the world. As a point of comparison, Brazil, often referred to as the “storehouse of biodiversity”, has only 50% more unique species whilst being 28 times larger.

Here is one of the largest scale project I have yet seen to battle climate change. It is also one of the strongest in terms of hopes it generates.

Instead of using high-tech ultra-expensive only-for-rich-countries solution promoted everywhere, this one is cheap and benefit the poorest. In actual fact, it creates a proper green economy by taking a desolate arid valley the size of Belgium and turns it into a lush oasis of life and abundance, creating wealth and taking subsistence farmers out of poverty.

Desertification is probably the most critical issue that the world is facing. For numerous reasons including over-logging, poor agricultural practices, poor water management and poorness itself, the world is rapidly turning into a desert.

It does not need to be. The following videos prove it and show a way to solve the problem.

Willie Smits set out with a mission to save orang-utans some years ago. Facing tremendous degradation of their natural habitats, those intelligent animals on the verge of extinction are being killed for food, traded as pets or simply failing to thrive as their home gets degraded.

In the following video, you will see how the process of saving these creatures led him on to restoring the rainforest, creating job, preventing the creation of yet another desert and giving people and the nature a chance to develop together in harmony.

Paul Stamets makes an amazing presentation on an organism that is more often than not totally ignored: mycelium – the fruit of which are mushroom.