A new investigation by Amphora Media, in collaboration with Arena for Journalism in Europe and supported by The Malta Environment Foundation, reveals how nearly 830,000 square metres of nature and cropland have been built up in Malta between 2018 and 2023.

That’s about 116 football pitches – or two Manoel Islands – and roughly a quarter of Comino. It’s almost double the entire land area of Vatican City.

The investigation uses methodology established in ‘Green to Grey’, an award-winning investigation into documented green land (nature and cropland) loss in Europe. It was coordinated by Arena for Journalism in Europe and initiated by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) to quantify for the first time exactly how much nature is being lost to construction in Europe.

41 journalists from 11 countries worked together with scientists from the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) to refine their novel methodology. Malta was excluded... until now.

The land use changes may seem small on a map and are dispersed across Malta and Gozo. But as Peter Verburg, professor in environmental spatial analysis at VU University Amsterdam, explained, the cumulative impact is leading to global change.

Each shape is a verified change polygon: green land cover in 2018 that is built or developed by 2025. Scroll to assemble the island, explore the map and each individual site by clicking on a shape, then scrub through the years to watch as the satellite imagery changes.