The climate crisis is escalating.Amultitude ofmicrobe-based solutions have been proposed, and these technologies hold great promise and could be deployed along with other climate mitigation strategies. However, these solutions have not been deployed effectively at scale. To reverse this inaction, collaborators across different sectors are needed—from industry, funders and policymakers — to coordinate their widespread deployment with the goal of avoiding climate catastrophe. This collective call from joint scientific societies, institutions, editors and publishers, requests that the global community and governments take immediate and decisive emergency action, while also proposing a clear and effective framework for deploying these solutions at scale.
Microbes and the climate crisis
Microorganisms have a pivotal but often overlooked role in the climate system — they drive the biogeochemical cycles of our planet, are responsible for the emission, capture and transformation of greenhouse gases, and control the fate of carbon in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Fromhumans to corals, most organisms rely on a microbiome that assists with nutrient acquisition, defence against pathogens and other functions. Climate change can shift this host–microbiome relationship from beneficial to harmful. For example, ongoing global coral bleaching events, where symbiotic host–microbiome relationships are replaced by dysbiotic (that is, pathogenic) interactions, and the consequent mass mortalitymean the extinction of these ‘rainforests of the sea’ may bewitnessed in this lifetime. Specifically, a decline of 70–90% in coral reefs is expected with a global temperature rise of 1.5 °C. Although this example highlights how the microbiome is inextricably linked to climate problems, there is a wealth of evidence that microbes and the microbiome have untapped potential as viable climate solutions. However, despite the promise of these approaches, they have yet to be embraced or deployed at scale in a safe and coordinated way that integrates the necessary but also feasible risk assessment and ethical considerations.
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