At first glance, the Timanfaya National Park in the interior of Lanzarote, the Eastern-most of Spain’s Canary Islands, seems little more than a desolate landscape of lava fields with volcanos rising over them. It is only once you look closer that you can see the austere beauty of the many lava tubes, calderas, and craggy peaks, the lava sea, all wind-worn over the centuries. The arid, rocky plains and the smooth, naturally wind-swept fields of volcanic ash hold an austere beauty all their own. Euphorbia plants and lichens, as well as lizards and insects, call this untouched, protected area home.

It was a quiet afternoon on Raratonga, in the Cook Islands, when Lydia Nga heard the news. With the stroke of a pen, her homeland, 15 scattered islets west of Tahiti, a country smaller than Detroit, had grown exponentially, reborn as a 690,000 square-mile nation. But it wasn't the islands that grew. In 1982, the Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea ruled that coastal nations had jurisdiction over their own "exclusive economic zone," defined as 200 miles of the ocean floor, measured from the shore.

Surrounded by angry neighbors, Costa Rica chooses national parks, wildlife preservation, free health and no-cost education through college. Oars up for these rafters on a quiet stretch of the Pacuare River, a classic pool-and-drop stream. ©Steve Haggerty/ColorWorld. TURRIALBA, Costa Rica – It was 6:01 a.m. when we heard them barking, insistent “huh-huh-huh-huhs” rising above the rain forest canopy. After a …