One thing above all: 2 square meters per second. Italy that eats itself, consumes its territory to the detriment of any green project. A country that has lost in one year 57 km2 of territory.
The data from the ISPRA SNPA report "Soil consumption in Italy 2020" is a dry blow to all the ideas of sustainability spread by the government. The Report is not wrong, because inside there are the numbers of 12 Observatories of the Regions and Autonomous Provinces. The increase in land use not keeping pace with population growth, technicians say. THEn Italy cement grows more than the population. In 2019, 420 children were born and the soil was advancing by 57 million square metres, at the rate of 2 square meters per second.
Bitter moral: as if every new born, in Milan or Trapani, brought 135 square meters of concrete into the cradle.
Sicily is the Region with the highest percentage growth in areas with water hazards. Something good is recorded only in Valle d'Aosta, close to the "0 land consumption" goal.
What happened to the government's proposals, of the committees that at every calamity (God forbid) announce extraordinary laws and plans to avoid mourning and tragedies? A mountain of documents, of studies from ministerial rooms without producing anything, to have such heavy numbers.
Last year i 57 million square meters of new construction sites and construction took place "in a country that sees a decline of over 120 inhabitants in the same period". How do you talk about sustainable economy and new forms of livability in the face of so much territorial voracity?
Liguria has almost 30% of soil sealed in areas with hydraulic hazards. Concrete covers 4% of its landslide risk areas, 7% of those with high seismic hazard. And victims of floods and collapses are still mourned there.
La city of Rome, administered by the Five Stars, takes the absolute black jersey: it has had an increase in artificial soil of 108 hectares. It is the Italian municipality with the largest amount of territory transformed in one year: 500 hectares from 2012 to today. None of the Five Stars commented. And still along the coasts already cemented for almost a quarter of their surface, soil consumption "grows with an intensity 2-3 times greater than that which occurs in the rest of the territory". What does Minister Costa think?
Italians bear silent, but all this has a cost. More than 7 billion euros in total for the damage caused to all types of soil, but above all to agriculture due to lack of productivity. It is easy these days to say that Italy will be more sustainable with European aid. The Ispra report takes pictures land degradation and that of a certain idea of a country where the real risks run by millions of citizens always come after something else.
