Territory
The total land area of the country is 2040 km2 (excluding the Chagos Archipelago), that is the 180th largest nation in the world by size. Mauritian territory also incorporates the island of Rodrigues, which is situated some 560 kilometers to the east and is 104 km2 in area. Rodrigues used to be the country tenth district, it gained autonomous status in 2002. The twin islands of Agaléga is situated some 1,000 km to the north of Mauritius, it a total land area of 2,600 hectares. Saint Brandon is situated some 430 km to the north-east of Mauritius, it is an archipelago comprising a number of sand-banks, shoals and islets. Just off the Mauritian coast lie some 49 tiny uninhabited islands and islets (see Islets of Mauritius), some of them are used as natural reserves for the protection of endangered species.
The nation's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is about 1.2 million square kilometers in the Indian Ocean. Four fishing banks fall within EEZ limits, the Soudan Banks (including East Soudan Bank), Nazareth Bank, Saya de Malha Bank, Hawkins Bank. In 2011 the United Nations endorsed the joint submission of Mauritius and Seychelles to extend their continental shelf of 396,000 km2 in the Mascarene region which gives the two countries sovereign right to jointly manage and exploit the seabed and subsoil of the joint area.
Read more about this topic: Territories And Dependencies Of Mauritius
Famous quotes containing the word territory:
“I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“When the excessively shy force themselves to be forward, they are frequently surprisingly unsubtle and overdirect and even rude: they have entered an extreme region beyond their normal personality, an area of social crime where gradations don’t count; unavailable to them are the instincts and taboos that booming extroverts, who know the territory of self-advancement far better, can rely on.”
—Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)