2023: The Year that Our Planet's Environmental Signals Played Loud and Clear

The year 2023 saw quite a few global science policy alerts. The first was the UN Water Conference in New York, held decades after the first one in 1977 in Argentina when, ironically, it was under a military dictatorship. At the conference, the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW) defined water as a global and local (“glocal”) common good and warned about impending, critical, multi-dimensional water crises such as the breaching of the planetary boundaries of the water cycle and water injustice to humans as well as ecosystems. GCEW asked for renewed governance and economic thinking on water management at all scales.

2023年涌现多起全球科学政策相关警示事件。首起事件便是在纽约举办的联合国水大会（UN Water Conference），该会议距1977年在阿根廷举办的首届大会已过去数十载——颇具讽刺意味的是，首届大会举办之际，阿根廷正处于军事独裁统治之下。本次大会上，全球水经济委员会（Global Commission on the Economics of Water, GCEW）将水界定为兼具全球性与地方性的"全球地方化（glocal）"公共品，并预警了迫在眉睫的严峻多维度水危机，包括水循环突破行星边界（planetary boundaries）、人类与生态系统遭遇水不公正等问题。该委员会呼吁在所有治理尺度上，重新审视水管理的治理模式与经济思维框架。