Restoring microbial relations and landscapes: a relational conceptual framework for fermentation, culture, and health equity

Introduction: Biodiversity decline in both external environments and internal human microbiomes indicates disrupted relationships between humans, microbes, food systems, and ecological landscapes. These interconnected landscapes are important for global health and sustainability education, as biodiversity decline reflects disruptions in human, microbial, and environmental relationships.Theory: This study develops a conceptual framework, Living Microbial Landscapes, extending the notion of living landscapes to include microbial ecologies by framing the human gut microbiome as an internal ecology interconnected with surrounding environments through food practices. Drawing on Justin Dillon and Arjen Wals’s framework of uncovering, recovering, and restoring, the study integrates heritage and modern health knowledge to support sustainability education responses to nutritional health, health equity, and ecological justice.Method: This study uses a conceptual and interpretive approach based on case vignettes of heritage fermented food practices, including Umqombothi, Amasi and MaRewu, to explore how microbial diversity and productive relationships between humans, microbes, and environments are generated through fermentation, care, and intergenerational learning.Results: The analysis shows heritage fermented food practices function as living microbial practices in which food preparation, household environments, microbial communities, and cultural knowledge are interlinked. The framework connects ecological thinking, heritage food knowledge, and microbial health to support relational and equity-centred educational practices for sustainable health.Conclusion:Although developed through Southern African examples, the framework can be extended to fermented food traditions across cultures as sites of microbial diversity, heritage knowledge, and sustainable learning. Restoring microbial diversity and relationships through traditional fermented foods represents a pathway toward health justice, ecological justice, equity, and epistemic justice.