Preface

by Carl Folke, Beijer Institute, founder of the Stockholm Resilience Centre

Earth has a thin outer shell – only a few kilometers from the sunlit depths of the ocean and the surface of the land up into the atmosphere. A layer less than one percent of the planet’s thickness, yet enough to hold all of life. Here, in the biosphere, the conditions for life exist. Here, evolution has unfolded for more than 3.5 billion years.

And it all began with microorganisms. Invisible life forms that transformed Earth’s chemistry, created the oxygen we breathe, the soils we cultivate, and the food chains that sustain us. Even today, they keep the cycles of life running – from decomposition in the soil and the carbon cycle in the oceans to the intimate symbiosis within our own bodies.

We humans are late arrivals in this thin shell. If the biosphere were a single day, we have only been here for the last six seconds. Yet we are entirely dependent on the web of microbes, plants, and animals that came before us and with which we are in constant relation. Our DNA was shaped by the same evolutionary processes as bacteria. Our digestion, our heartbeat, even our ability to think is intertwined with substances that microbes release and circulate through life’s cycles.

Our lives cannot be separated from theirs. Every breath, every bite of food, every cell in our bodies carries traces of these ancient organisms. They are not only our history – they are our present and our future.

To understand the biosphere is therefore also to understand our relationship with microorganisms. They connect us in a single ecosystem, a living network where everything is interlinked. When we see bacteria – revealed through art and in a new light – we can also begin to see our own place in the world differently: as part of a shared health on a shared, living planet.