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PHOTO: DOMINICO ZAPATA/STUFF Much of New Zealand’s versatile land has been paved over and landscaped.

OPINION: The latest environmental snapshot from the Government paints a worrying picture of polluted rivers, threatened species and overfishing.

We’ve heard all of that before. But it also highlights a slow-moving environmental problem closer to home for the 86 per cent of Kiwis living in cities – the alarming loss of ‘versatile land’ to urban sprawl.

Versatile land is the productive land with rich, high-quality soils located close to our urban centres. It makes up the fertile floodplains near our coasts where we built our major cities.

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