This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/collapse by /u/Envbiologist on 2025-10-01 12:45:52+00:00.

So the title is pretty self-explanatory, I think. We keep burying ecosystems and even farm soil under concrete, and once destroyed, recovering them to their previous state is almost impossible.

We have surpased seven of nine planetary boundaries and land appropiation for human development is one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss. The rate at which we are consuming nature is staggering. And it is happening bit by bit, unnoticed, in projects that individually don’t seem to amount to much but that accumulate. Worse, current laws allow it, even in “green” Europe, in part becuse the process of environmental impact assessment is corrupt, generally paid by the developer and evaluated in isolation, without considering the big picture.

As long as we keep valuing money more than nature, we will keep destroying unique ecosystems to build golf courses or ports for yachts and call it progress. And when we don’t have functioning ecosystems anymore we will collapse, no matter how many solar farms we build. Earth will be a concrete wasteland.

As a side note: If anyone wants to contribute, the researchers of this study have developed an app so citizens can help identify and estimate these small land losses globally.