Policy is the set of rules, principles, and decisions that guide how a system behaves and who is responsible for implementation. It includes formal laws and regulations, standards, budgets, and incentives that shape everyday behavior in practice.

By 'Fungal Policy' we mean the inclusion of mycorrhizal fungi in decision-making at global and national levels.

Policy can be made at any level: by governments and international bodies (top-down), or by communities, organizations, farmers, and scientists (bottom-up).

Fungal policy is about mainstreaming mycorrhizal networks into existing global frameworks for conservation, desertification, climate and development, and into the tools that put those frameworks into practice, such as environmental impact assessments and monitoring and restoration protocols. It covers international agreements and national formal laws, but also standards, protocols, funding and practices that determine whether a law changes anything tangible on the ground. Standards and protocols turn broad commitments into something that can be applied, monitored and enforced e.g., such as agreed methods for measuring fungal diversity, restoring sites, and regulating inoculants.

Farmers, indigenous and local communities and scientists also shape fungal policy, through the practices they adopt, the knowledge they share, and the demonstrations that showcase what works to governments.

Important questions to ask are who will use a new policy, and how will it be translated into practice? And once translated, how will a policy be implemented, what will actually change?

Adding fungi to a law achieves little if the law lacks enforcement, funding, trained staff, or local buy-in. Every fungal policy proposal should specify who will use it, how it will be translated into practice, and what will change on the ground.

Frameworks, standards and protocols: SPUN wants to integrate fungal science and technology into existing global and national frameworks, for example restoration and monitoring laws as well as conservation, desertification and climate strategies. SPUN also wants fungi built into the tools that put those frameworks into practice, e.g., standards that define what counts as healthy soil or successful restoration and protocols for how to sample, monitor, and restore sites in ways that include fungal networks.

Differentiation between frameworks, standards, and protocols:

• Framework: a law, convention, or strategy that sets goals and rules for a field, such as the UNCCD or a national restoration law.
• Standard: an agreed criteria that defines what is successful, such as a threshold for soil health or a quality requirement for inoculants.
• Protocol: a step-by-step method for carrying out a task, such as sampling fungal diversity or restoring a degraded site.

Data-driven policy change: SPUN's role is the validation and contribution of scientific data which can be used to develop and support protocols. For example with fungal restoration whereby SPUN's role is to support practitioners with scientific validation by creating baseline data to monitor how mycorrhizal communities respond to different restoration interventions over time. Click here to read about how SPUN contributes scientific data to management practices.

Narrative shift: The current story many institutions tell about nature concerns ‘fauna and flora’. Alongside the Fungi Foundation, who have spearheaded this initiative, SPUN wants to integrate fungi into this incomplete story, shift how people understand nature from ‘fauna and flora’ to ‘flora, fauna, AND fungi’. This is a mindset change as much as a legal one. It shifts what is worth protecting in order to ensure that fungi is recognised wherever decisions about nature are made.

Governance: Policy is not necessarily top-down governmental policy. It also includes bottom-up power, i.e., local farmers and scientists. SPUN works on both levels advocating for the inclusion of fungi in global and national frameworks, standards and protocols and with the local scientists and communities to showcase how local data, practices, and demos work on the ground. SPUN has created a decentralized community-led model called the Underground Explorers to support this process.

Mainstreaming: SPUN wants to build fungi into existing frameworks, standards, and protocols, as opposed to creating separate fungal rules and guidelines on the side.

SPUN aims to integrate fungal science and technology into what already governs biodiversity, climate, land management, and development. For example, incorporating fungi into the COP17 CBD Global Review should be understood as a practical opportunity to accelerate the delivery of the Global Biodiversity Framework, e.g., fungi should be understood as a practical tool to accelerate its delivery and close existing implementation gaps.

Policy gap: Currently underground networks and mycorrhizal fungi are an afterthought. There is a policy-knowledge gap, with fungi playing an invisible role. Think of economists defining ‘invisible work’ (invisible labor) when referring to the work done to keep a household running, which was only recently coined in 1987.

Underground networks help ecosystems thrive, contribute to a stable climate, and play a major role in the food we eat. And yet they are not mentioned, or rarely mentioned, in laws and plans for land use and natural laws and frameworks to fight climate change and desertification. Mycorrhizal fungi are absent from the planning.

Policy shift: One objective is for people and institutions who are making decisions to recognize, protect, and invest into fungi. In other words, taking underground networks into account so that ecosystems can restore more quickly, and are properly protected from direct and indirect damage.

Related goals are policy shift and demonstrating to governments. For example, refugia and biodiversity corridors can lead to recovery and combat desertification. Once demonstrated, successful practices can spread to other projects so that the knowledge becomes national policy or law. An example would be data that helps contribute to the UNCCD which then becomes a pilot program or model champion. This is a theory of change.