Introduction
At the dawn of the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Stockholm Conference on March 18, 2022, a turning point in the development of international environmental policies, unprecedented temperatures were recorded simultaneously in the polar zones of Earth. In the face of the abnormal 40°C and 30°C above-average temperatures in Antarctica and the Arctic respectively, calling attention to unpredictable extremes, climatologists highlighted that the temperature expectations in the polar zones should be revised −yet again.1 Almost every day, extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornados, landslides, heat waves, and forest fires, occur in different parts of the world. These catastrophic events reveal that the permanent and far-reaching impact of human activity on the planet is causing serious and unpredictable changes in the biophysical processes of the earth system. The magnitude of these human-driven changes has led many scientists to believe that we are about to enter into (or have entered) a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene: an era in which human activity is the dominant factor influencing the climate and the environment,2 and the stable and predictable conditions of the Holocene are left behind.
