Italy eats up 2.3 square meters of earth per second with concrete. Twenty hectares a day. In 2023, 72.5 square kilometers have “changed color”: from nature green to concrete gray. All this happens while the population decreases… This is reported in the Ispra annual report (Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research) on land consumption.
If in 2006 each citizen corresponded to 348.2 square meters of land covered by artificial works, today the figure has increased to 365.7 square metres. A surface, so to speak, almost equal to Lombardy. Who deserves the black jersey: 12.19% of its territory is covered in concrete, against a national average of 7.16%.
Among the main causes of the assault on greenery, logistics, large-scale distribution, warehouses, shopping centres.
Denouncing the unstoppable subtraction of “free” land is not an ecological whim, but the first step towards becoming aware of the damage this entails: increased carbon dioxide, temperature and pollution and, above all, increased exposure to floods: concrete, unlike soil, does not absorb water, but becomes a highway that transports it.
Proposals for laws have been lying around in Parliament for years, including that of the network Let’s save the landscapewho ask us to take action, aiming for example to recover the existing, often abandoned, rather than building on virgin land.
