Scientific Abstract
In 2023, the International Union of the Microbiological Societies raised a call on all ‘microbiological societies to unite and raise awareness of the importance of microbial diversity for the sustainability of our planet.’ This represents one amongst many efforts in the life sciences highlighting the need for attention to the human impact on microorganisms, set against the background of the unfolding planetary crisis.
Research in the natural sciences has revolutionised the way we study and understand microbes, establishing them as relational entities, interconnected to all human and more-than-human others on this planet. At every level of biological organisation, microbes help sustain life on Earth. Such breakthroughs have deep implications for how we understand the ‘individual’ subject across disciplines.
This project builds on the discussions of the workshop on ‘Legal Rights of Microbes’ held in Geneva in March 2025. The conference identified a central tension: while scientific ontologies on microbes are gradually shifting toward relational, functional, and ecological frameworks of microbiology, the global legal and governance frameworks have not kept pace. In contrast, these frameworks strip the situatedness of microbes, abstracting them as pathogens to be protected against; property to be owned/exploited; and/or conservation targets that lack agency.
The overarching aim of the project is to shift this disciplinary focus towards recognizing the inextricable interdependence that all living species have with microbes.
The project explores new normative basis to guide our interactions (and, intra-actions) with microbes, grounded in relational thinking that can guide purposeful rethinking/reimagining of legal and governance frameworks. Such a normative shift that explicitely centers the role of microbes holds the potential to revolutionize sectors such as agriculture, medicine, and resource extraction, by fundamentally altering our understanding of how human activities affect microbial communities.
Methodology
This project undertakes interdisciplinary research, bringing into conversation literature in international law, social sciences, and natural sciences on the social thought of microbes. It draws on understandings of relationality in indigenous cosmologies as well as post-human legal theories of new materialism. In terms of academic relevance, it enables a re-thinking and re-imagining of legal and governance frameworks that can adequately acknowledge, accommodate, and promote the relationality of microbes and protect their microbial diversity for sustaining all forms of life.
