Green Microbiology for Planetary Resilience: A Research Agenda for Microbial Sustainability Science

The planet is facing a crisis occasioned by climate change, biodiversity loss, physical, chemical, and biological soil degradation, water insecurity and pollution, infectious disease crises, and unsustainable production systems and vulnerable food systems. These problems are deeply interconnected and share a common solution: microbial science. Microbes are central to maintaining or restoring water safety and quality, the carbon and nitrogen cycles responsible for maintaining and improving soil quality and fertility, plant productivity and immunity from pests and diseases, animal and human health and immunity, and other essential ecosystem services that maintain plant, animal, human, and environmental health. Despite the transformative potential of microbes and a growing body of recent scholarship recognizing their centrality to sustainability at a global scale, there is no coordinated, actionable research and policy agenda mobilizing microbial science toward planetary resilience. To this end, this perspective builds on established principles of Green Microbiology to advance a 10-year, forward-looking research agenda spanning climate science, food systems, water security, circular bioeconomy, One Health, biodiversity conservation, and artificial intelligence and their alignment to microbial research, technology, trends, and governance and policy structures with the fundamentals of planetary resilience.