An opportunity missed

In January several news outlets (for example Phys.Org) reported that “In 2019, major fires in Australia, Russia and California burned over 13.5 million hectares of land—an area four times greater than the size of Belgium.”

This was an opportunity to bring out the rarely seen comparison “an area the size of North Korea”. Unfortunately none of these publishers grasped it.

In February in South America the Columbia Reports article had the headline “How to steal land the size of a small country“. It went on to reveal that “Medellin‘s elite and friends of Colombia’s former President Alvaro Uribe were among the main beneficiaries of the dispossession of more than 3 million hectares of land, an area the size of Belgium.”

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