Word: mi.
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...already have a full-occupancy planet," says Noel Brown, North American director of the U.N. Environment Program. Today 80% of deforestation results from population growth. If the numbers keep rising until 2050, the U.N. estimates, an additional 5.9 million sq km (2.3 million sq. mi.) of land will have to be turned over to farming, roads and urban uses. This is almost equivalent to the total size of protected natural areas on earth today. Most good agricultural land is already under plow, and each year desertification, improper irrigation and overuse take millions of acres out of production. Farms may increase...
ABOUT 15,000 VOTERS IN CANADA'S SPARSELY SETtled Northwest Territories made it to the polls last week and narrowly approved a plan to split the vast region in two. Once a chain of legal steps is completed, the new 772,000-sq.-mi. territory, to be called Nunavut, will become a national home for the Eskimo -- or Inuit -- of the country's eastern Arctic. It will encompass a huge area of mainland and islands stretching from Manitoba almost to the North Pole that is thought to be rich in oil and minerals...
...plans to set up a local administration and hand over political control of the area by 1999. In November the residents, 85% of whom are Inuit, will be asked to vote again on a complicated land settlement. The deal will offer the Inuit outright ownership of 135,000 sq. mi. and a cash payment of $1 billion over 14 years. If it is accepted, a crash program will begin training the Inuit to take over administration of the Nunavut territorial government...
Most of the destruction was limited to the depressed South Central area, a 46-sq.-mi. part of town plagued by gangs, poverty and the drug-dealing criminals who dominate life there. Not surprisingly, it was the besieged black community that suffered the most. In a bid to protect their businesses from the rioters' wrath, a number of shopkeepers desperately posted signs declaring that their stores were BLACK OWNED. In many cases, the signs were ignored by looters and arsonists who destroyed the shops anyway...
...Angkor monuments, scientists need to explore what made the ancient society work. At a minimum, they have to understand the remarkable water-management system created by the Khmers. Beginning in the late 9th century a succession of Kings constructed enormous reservoirs, some as large as 20 sq. mi. These barays and a complex gravity-fed network of moats and canals provided an almost continuous supply of water so that three rice crops a year could be grown. That production enabled Khmer Kings to extend their empires and build temples to their own divinity. It is the destruction of that intricate...