We recently mentioned the grow your own mushroom kits two Berkeley students are successfully marketing as one of our top 10 picks at the recent Natural Food Product’s Expo. Here is a story on the latest use of mushrooms to help heal our planet.

In toxic waste sites “so steeped in oil, dioxins, and other chemicals that hardly anything can grow on them,” fungi have become part of a plan for accelerated clean-up, reports Michael J. Coren for Fast Company. Under the guidance of Mohamed Hijri, a biologist and professor at the University of Montreal, a few of nature’s heavy-hitters will be introduced to such sites to work their magic. First, willow trees will be planted densely to absorb heavy metals. The trees will then be burned, their ashes used as food for fungi and bacteria able to metabolize petrochemical waste. Fungi selection is still underway, but has a big payoff. A process that might have taken hundreds of years (or longer) can be accomplished in just a few.

Discovery of the beneficial uses of mushrooms is not entirely new. Mycologist Paul Stamets has been working to bring awareness to the possibilities for decades. He made major breakthroughs in 2008 with his TED talk, “Paul Stamets on 6 ways mushrooms can save the world” and acknowledgement from Utne Reader, which named him one the 50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World. Looks like his ideas have spread, taking shape in inspiring new forms.

by Rachel Cernansky

Ecuador had agreed last year to accept money in exchange for not drilling for oil in Yasuní National Park, an area of the Amazon rainforest that last year set a record for the most mammal, bird, amphibian and plant species in the world.

But a fundraiser was held last night that collected the $116 million necessary to temporarily halt exploitation of the area for oil.

Digital Journal explains:

An odd alliance of governments, film stars, Japanese businesses, Russian institutions, and soft drink companies have come forward to help protect the heart of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador from exploitation by oil companies.

Yasuní National Park in Ecuador has become the planet’s latest success story, with a United Nations “crowdfunding” initiative held Thursday night to raise $116 million, an amount needed to put a temporary halt to exploitation by the oil industry of 722 square miles of the Ecuadorian Amazon known as the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) oil fields.

The Guardian has more:

Development of the oilfield, which was planned to take place immediately if the money had not been raised, would have inevitably led to ecological devastation and the eventual release of over 400m tonnes of CO2.

Ecuador agreed to halt plans to mine the oilfield if it could raise 50% of the $7.6bn revenue being lost by not mining the oil. While the world’s leading conservation groups pledged nothing, regional governments in France and Belgium offered millions of dollars – with $2m alone from the Belgian region of Wallonia. A New York investment banker donated her annual salary and Bo Derek, Leonardo DiCaprio, Edward Norton and Al Gore all contributed.

Wangari Maathai receives the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo – the first black African woman to do so

Wangari Maathai’s compelling life story is inextricably linked with the social and political changes that so much of Africa has been through since the idea of throwing off European colonialism began to gain traction shortly after World War II.

Her unique insight was that the lives of Kenyans – and, by extension, of people in many other developing countries – would be made better if economic and social progress went hand in hand with environmental protection.

The Green Belt Movement, which she founded in 1977, has planted an estimated 45 million trees around Kenya.

The straightforward environmental benefits of that would have been important enough on their own in a country whose population has grown more than 10-fold over the last century, creating huge pressure on land and water.

But what made the movement more remarkable was that it was also conceived as a source of employment in rural areas, and a way to give new skills to women who regularly came second to men in terms of power, education, nutrition and much else.

Now, she has succumbed to a battle with cancer. But if cancer was new to her, battle was definitely not; it was a way of life.

Opposing a major government-backed development in Nairobi, she was labelled a “crazy woman”; it was suggested that she should behave like a good African woman and do as she was told.

Her former husband made similar comments when suing for divorce: she was strong-willed, and could not be controlled.

To read more of this BBC story, click here.

How can architects build a new world of sustainable beauty? By learning from nature. At TEDSalon in London, Michael Pawlyn describes three habits of nature that could transform architecture and society: radical resource efficiency, closed loops, and drawing energy from the sun.