During the afternoon of Good Friday, Tina, 32, and John, 36, entered Malmö Airport and stopped airplanes from starting by locking themselves onto the area. This is part of a series of actions where the movement Återställ Våtmarker (Restore Wetlands) aims to sound the alarm and draw attention to the failing Swedish climate policy.
– We must protest where we will be heard, and we do it despite the increasing repression in our country. Only shouting on squares and streets will get us nowhere. Our climate minister is failing all climate goals, increasing emissions and on top of that lying to our faces. It’s time for us all to wake up, says Pontus Bergendahl, press spokesperson for Återställ Våtmarker.
Återställ Våtmarker’s goal is a ban on peat mining. Research suggests that peat is a ticking time bomb. Rewetting wetlands is the easiest, cheapest and most effective way to reduce emissions.
– Families are already being torn apart around the world today. And everything we love is being wiped out. And I refuse to stand by and watch. It’s necessary for scared and worried people to take the free-falling climate politics seriously. And act. There is no other option anymore, says Tina Kronberg Berggren, who participated in the airport action today.
Last year, research showed that natural ecosystems have stopped absorbing carbon dioxide. Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute, the world’s leading research center on climate change, said in an article in The Guardian: Nature has so far compensated for our mistreatment of the earth. This has now reached the end of the road.
– I’m doing this action for the love I have for the people around me and for all those who are already suffering as a result of climate change. I do it because I want the oceans and forests and the earth to continue to be a place for all living things here, says John Svensson Renström, who participated in the airport action today.
Press Spokesperson
Pontus Bergendahl
+46 709 146224
Images for press can be found here.
Facts about peat
Peat is extracted 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 extraction and 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 preventing 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, after Germany and Finland, is the third largest peat producer in the world.
Återställ Våtmarker’s campaign aims to get the government to ban the destructive peat mining with immediate effect. Land where peat mining has been carried out must be immediately restored to viable wetlands to reduce Sweden’s emissions; protect against forest fires and drought, 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 Våtmarker’s 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.