Today, 16/04/2025 at 10h00, two people from Återställ Våtmarker (Restore Wetlands) boarded the Royal ship Vasa in Stockholm. After they hung banners with “Ban peat mining” they got arrested by police.
“I tie myself, like Odysseus, to the mast of the Vasa Ship to oppose lying politicians and their lobby organizations that, like Sirens, lure us with completely unbridled greed. When we all know that their politics are downright deadly,” says Pontus Bergendahl who boarded the ship.
The Vasa Ship weighs 1,200 tons. In 2023, 2 million tons of peat were mined in Sweden. This means that 1,667 Vasa Ships are dug out of our bogs every year. The carbon in the peat quickly breaks down into the climate-damaging greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which causes many times more greenhouse gas emissions than the domestic flight traffic in Sweden. At the same time, the authorities licensed 89 new peat mines in 2023 and the government is keen to see peat used as an energy fuel again, even though peat is dirtier energy than oil, coal and gas due to its lower calorific value. The calorific value calculates the amount of energy that can be extracted in proportion to the carbon dioxide emissions.
For 333 years, Vasa lay preserved underwater. In that time, the peat on our bogs grew by only three decimetres. On average, peat is mined to a depth of 1.5 metres. This corresponds to one thousand five hundred years of stored carbon, 4.5 times the Vasa ship was preserved under water. At the same time, all of Sweden’s emissions are to be zero in twenty years, which is why the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has determined that peat should be counted as fossil.
Due to trading in emissions rights and setting climate targets, the extraction of peat and the combustion of peat for energy production has decreased somewhat in recent years. However, the use of peat for cultivation purposes has increased. In 2021, 85 percent of Sweden’s peat consumption was used for cultivation and stable bedding. Regardless of whether the peat is used for combustion, cultivation substrate or bedding in stables, the peat breaks down over a ten-year period and the carbon is released as the climate-damaging gas carbon dioxide.
Banning the use of peat for cultivation purposes is a simple and effective way to combat climate change, since plant waste (or manure, bark, wood fiber, etc.) can replace peat in cultivation.
“The Finnish state is ravaging and plundering our bogs and destroying our future. All the money goes straight into the pockets of the Finnish state. The people in the countryside are left with polluted waterways, devastated nature and lost jobs.” says Olof Andersson who took part in the action.
Återställ Våtmarker (Restore Wetlands) is fighting against the Finnish state and their company Neova’s peat mining in Sweden, not with warships, but peacefully with public education and opinion-building. Finland has been granted more than 465 million euros from the EU to halve the use of peat as an energy source. At the same time, the Finnish state, through the state-owned company Neova, has been digging up Swedish bogs for years to mine fossil peat. The state-owned Finnish company Neova is currently behind 72% of all peat mining in Sweden.
Facts about peat
Peat is mined from bogs. A peat bog is a place where dead organic material has been stored for thousands of years surrounded by water. The carbon that has been stored ends up in the atmosphere when it comes into contact with oxygen during mining and therefore turns into carbon dioxide. Peat bogs cover only 3% of the Earth’s surface but store twice as much carbon as all the forests on Earth. Leaving peat bogs untouched is vital to prevent the climate catastrophe from getting worse. This can only be ensured by a law banning peat extraction.
Such a ban would be particularly important in Sweden, which has 15 percent of its land area covered by peatlands, and which is the third largest peat producer in the world after Germany and Finland.
Spokespersons
Helen Wahlgren
+46 762 16 0268
[email protected]
Roxy Farhat
+46 704 78 3443
[email protected]
Pictures for media here
More information can be found at https://aterstallvatmarker.se/
The Återställ Våtmarker campaign aims to get the government to ban destructive peat extraction with immediate effect. Land where peat extraction has been carried out must immediately be restored to viable wetlands to reduce Sweden’s emissions; protect against forest fires and droughts, clean and replenish groundwater reserves, and increase biodiversity.
Återställ Våtmarker started at the end of March 2022. And is an association of people who, through peaceful resistance, intend to force the Swedish government to ban peat mining and restore wetlands to take the first necessary step towards protecting its population instead of destroying it. Återställ Våtmarker is part of an international network, the A22 Network, of resistance taking place in 10 different countries.
Återställ Våtmarkers’ vision is an improved democracy where the people get to decide through citizens’ councils how our country will become a country without toxins and emissions where our children can grow up safe and healthy, a society where we live in harmony with nature and with each other.