Word: mi
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Mello, Brazil's first President with a green heart. Collor named Jose Lutzenberger, one of the world's foremost champions of rain-forest preservation, head of a new environment secretariat. The President also vowed to reverse decades of untrammeled development that destroyed 415,000 sq km (160,000 sq. mi.) -- an area the size of Iraq -- of the Amazon rain forest. He blew up airstrips used by gold miners who had invaded Yanomami Indian lands in the country's far north and made recognition of native territorial claims a top priority. The most visible symbol of environmental progress could...
...border between Brazil and Bolivia is a rare place where people profit from nature without destroying it. Called the Pantanal, it is a giant freshwater wetland that covers 140,000 sq km (54,000 sq. mi.). Unlike Brazil's other three great ecosystems -- the Atlantic forests, the Amazon and the plain called the Cerrado -- the Pantanal has not yet suffered grievous damage at the hand of man. Even more amazing, it retains some of the densest concentrations of wildlife in the Americas, despite the fact that settlers have worked cattle ranches in the area for more than 200 years...
...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...