This summer, the radical climate movement Restore Wetlands continued its action at Grimsås mosse in Västergötland with the aim of preventing the Finnish company Neova from extracting peat there and, ultimately, pushing for a national ban on peat extraction. Återställ Våtmarker is a young movement that in just a few years has succeeded in putting the restoration of wetlands on the political agenda, been at the forefront of the increasingly repressive policies regarding the right to demonstrate, and states a true democratic rule by the people as their longtime goal. We met one of their spokespersons, Roxy Farhat, on site in Grimsås.
Could you tell us about the background of Restore Wetlands – when and under what circumstances was it established?
Restore Wetlands was founded by Alfred Westh and Helen Wahlgren. They were active within Extinction Rebellion but felt that something more radical was needed. They took inspiration from Insulate Britain, a British movement blocking highways. The houses in the UK are poorly insulated which results in huge heat leakages which in turn means very big carbon emissions. Insulate Britain chose to focus on this specific question of insulating the houses as an effective way to lower emissions. Their actions caused an outrage, people were very upset and they were subjected to very harsh repression but it eventually led to a political breakthrough. After the movement dissolved, their demands became policy. Around the turn of 2022-2023 a new international network was about to be established. Helen and Alfred participated in one of their digital start up meetings together with Roger Hallam, and in April 2023 the network A22 was formally established. Restore Wetlands emerged as part of it. All the movements in the network work in a similar way – we focus on one specific question and make demands on the governments: you must implement this or else we’ll perform radical actions until you do. The idea is to break down the very complex and sometimes abstract climate crisis into very concrete efforts that makes a great difference. So Alfred and Helen brainstormed about what our demand in Sweden could be and came up with wetlands – drained wetlands leak a lot of carbon dioxide and according to IPCC the restoration of wetlands is one of the most efficient, fastest and cheapest ways to lower emissions drastically. So that’s how our movement was founded.
Could you give us a description of the internal structure? How do you organize members? How are decisions made? Is there an executive leadership?
We don’t have members, people are welcome to take part regardless of being new or having participated several times before and you only sign up to do what you have committed to – so it’s not like if you’ve participated in one of our actions we expect you to always take part. There’s no member register and there’s no fee. Within the movement some have an overall responsibility and then there’s work groups working with media, funding, mobilization and lectures. We divide the work between the work groups who in turn divides themselves into even smaller groups. We try to give the groups a lot of freedom but also possibilities to practice leadership. We encourage the groups to be a bit self-governing.
There’s about ten people working full time or part time exclusively with RW. Most of the groups consist of somebody working full time within the movement and volunteers, and often the ones working full time take on a bit more of a leadership since they have the most time to put in.
How is new activists introduced into the movement?
People find their way in in different ways. Some of the activists here in Grimsås for example has never taken part before, and then they start with a training in peaceful resistance. We always offer trainings before every action, you’re not allowed to take part if you haven’t participated in one. It’s fundamental in order to understand how peaceful civil disobedience work.
A lot of people have attended a lecture first or participated in a beer night or social gathering and then start as volunteers – then you get an introduction into the voluntary work.
We have local groups in Malmö, Stockholm and Gothenburg and they organize beer nights. We usually see the largest influx of people in connection with a wave of actions. More people get curious then.
How do you work in order to engage a broader activist base? Which are your methods to reach a larger number of activists?
If you register to attend a lecture or you’ve been to a beer night you leave your personal info and we always make sure to call people and keep contact. It’s a big step to join a radical movement so we work a lot with keeping in touch with people. I would say Sweden is kind of a difficult country to take direct action in – there are a lot of different thresholds. We’re a very small country and don’t have a strong activist culture like Germany for example. In Sweden we’ve had a strong trust in the system and the state for a long time – people might not think that activism is needed, that somebody else will solve the problem. Getting out of that mindset is quite hard.
Politicians have been successful in depoliticizing people, giving them the feeling that even if you think that a lot of things are not working you cannot do more than vote every forth year. There isn’t any longer really a perception in Sweden that you can actually change things if you join forces and get involved.
Which are your guiding principles? Have they been consistent since the beginning or developed over time?
Peaceful resistance is a very important basic principle, and a prerequisite for being allowed to participate in action.
And courage. It takes courage to acknowledge that this system won’t work. You have to face a lot of your own preconceptions and habits which is quite hard. It takes courage to face one’s fears and the social reactions you’ll meet when joining a radical movement. And then love. We also take action out of love. And even if people get pissed off and you turn out in a cell or in court, everything we do is out of love for all living, for nature and future generations, for ourselves and each other. A lot of people might not see the road blocks or the spraying of a parliament building as an act of love but ultimately that’s what it is.
You use civil disobedience and direct action as methods, like road blocks, which has gained significant public attention and resulted in prosecutions and in some cases prison sentences. Research shows that these actions raise awareness and support for the issues among the general public, while the activists who carry them out face harsh criticism. How do you yourselves view the effects of these actions?
We’ve seen the effect increase over several years. At the beginning of 2024, we declared victory in our demand to restore wetlands. The government started to talk about initiatives to restore wetlands and made it one of its priority areas in climate policy. For the record, their climate policy is an absolute joke, it doesn’t exist at all, everything is going in the wrong direction – but we still clearly saw that the issue was on the agenda. The media attributed it to us – stating that our disruptive actions had turned into actual policy. After that, we decided to focus completely on the demand to ban peat extraction. And in February this year, the Environmental Objectives Committee presented a report to the government on how to achieve their own and the EU’s climate targets, and one of their proposals was not to grant any new licenses for peat extraction from 2026 onwards.
On the same day that the Supreme Court handed down its acquittal in the motorway action case of August 29, 2022, a report was released by Social Change Lab, a British research group that’s been doing research on Restore Wetlands and the effects of our actions, and it clearly showed that we’ve had a direct impact on policy and that, even though people have been angry about our actions, they’ve still managed to distinguish between the goal and the method, concluding that people agree with the goal. It confirms what we’ve known all along, that yes, we piss people off, but it has effect.
The courts have prosecuted your activists on the charge of sabotage for the road blocks – the first indictment of this kind against peaceful activists – and recently the Supreme Court ruling you mentioned was handed down, concluding that the indictment is not applicable—which is also a significant victory for the right to demonstrate and freedom of expression in general. At the same time, the Swedish Democrats are pursuing a law proposal that would enable the state to convict climate activists who block roads or airplanes of terrorism. How do you navigate the increasing repression against activists and freedom of expression?
The first activists that took to the roads did it knowing fully well that they might end up in prison. And then the sabotage-charge came quite quickly. In the A22-network we often talk about repression as full of potential. Ultimately, it’s bizarre that people get imprisoned for sitting on a road for 10-20 minutes. The increasing repression leads to people in general seeing that it is actually quite fucked up. In the trials following our actions on the peat bogs we’ve been charged with gross trespassing and gross damage to property, and prison sentences have also been handed down. So people risk imprisonment for filling a ditch with shovels. It becomes absurd.
It influences public opinion in a way that could be beneficial to the struggle?
Yeah. We carried out a campaign stopping airplanes this spring, and everyone was prepared for a shorter prison sentence. But the alternative is letting the climate catastrophe continue to escalate, which of course is much worse than going to prison for a couple of months or years. Then, of course, society as a whole is moving in a much more repressive direction, which doesn’t surprise us at all – we actually expected a move based on this ruling. Even before we carried out the airplane blocks there was this interpellation debate in which a politician from the Swedish Democrats advocated for security penalties, meaning that individuals could be detained indefinitely before committing a crime as a preventive measure. They referred to climate activists who want to stop air travel as an example. Society will continue moving towards increasing repression regardless of us carrying out these actions, so it’s not like that if we just calm down ultimately people won’t be imprisoned for expressing their opinions. That’s the direction we’re heading in either way, and there’s no alternative if we want to achieve the rapid radical change that we desperately need.
Right now, you’re carrying out an action at Grimsås mosse, a peat bog exploited by the Finnish company Neova for peat extraction. Can you tell us a little more about what you’re doing here?
Grimsås is a small community located very close to a peat bog. Neova has been granted the right to extract peat from this bog under an old permit. Previously, there was a law that stated that if peat deposits were found, a company could apply to extract the peat regardless of what the landowner said. That law no longer exists, but Neova obtained this permit before the law was changed and has waited a very long time to use it. The local community has protested strongly against the quarrying. It’s the county administrative board that’s granted the permit, but many different local associations as well as the municipality are opposed to it. They’re concerned about their drinking water, and also because Nexans’ production—a factory producing fiber optics, among other things— is located right next to the bog and it’s very sensitive to dust. They absolutely do not want a peat mine here, it would jeopardize their production. They’re also the municipality’s largest employer, with five hundred employees. Neova is a company majority-owned by the Finnish state, and peat extraction creates very few jobs in Sweden. Most of those who work on the peat bog are seasonal workers, so it doesn’t contribute to the local community in any way, the opposite actually. It was the local community that contacted Restore Wetlands and asked for help. Initially we came here and met with the local people, held meetings, and discussed how we would carry out the resistance. On Ascension Day last year, we went out to the bog and dug 68 plugs in the ditches—meaning we filled them up and built dams in strategic locations to raise the water level. And then we were out there for three weeks last summer, filling the ditches again and stopping machines. Neova itself has said that we’ve delayed their operations here by a year. And now, here we are again, working according to the same method.
How do you view the climate movement’s relation to other social justice movements and struggles? Do you build alliances and networks?
There’s an idea that there must be an ecology within the movement—you need to have several different movements and networks working together to bring about change. We have many people who are active in RW who are also active in Mother’s of Rebellion or union activists or members of XR or the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation. Or like here in Grimsås, where we work extensively with the community association and local residents in various ways. This is extremely important. All movements have different perspectives and fulfill different functions. The residents of Grimsås have a local perspective that concerns their community and how they can continue to live here—we provide a broader perspective on the climate crisis and future generations. Both parts are crucial, they strengthen each other. It means a great deal to us that we have the support of the people of Grimsås, and to them it means a great deal that RW is coming to Grimsås and actually fight against this. They have gone through all the legal channels before, all the way up to the government. They feel completely powerless because no one is listening to them.
On your website, you state that you believe none of the classic ideologies—liberalism, conservatism, or socialism—can offer a vision of a world we can live in, but rather act as a barrier to change. What political system or structure do you envision that will not lead us back into the destructive engine of capitalism again?
We believe that ordinary people must be given much more power, as things stand now, power has shifted away from the people and been concentrated in the hands of politicians, large corporations, and billionaires. One example of this is a recent survey that showed that 89 percent of Swedes want a more robust climate policy, but instead we have—we don’t have a climate policy, we have an emissions policy. We have a fossil fuel policy. It’s obvious that politicians are not up to the task. We’re in a situation where no one is taking the responsibility needed to really drive this transition forward. Meanwhile, the general public is truly willing to make investments and sacrifices in order to halt this. We believe that we need a citizens’ council, a body that allows ordinary people to take part in politics and have a say. There was this research project conducted on citizens’ councils, where participants came up with much more progressive climate policies than politicians themselves, which shows that the will and the ideas are there, but not among those who are currently in power. Parliamentary politics as it stands today is very much bogged down in horse-trading between the parties, with very little room for any kind of real change, except for more repression. We believe that ordinary people must be given a place in politics. We need more democracy, we must expand democracy.
Grimsås is a great example—the local community has had absolutely no say about the peat extraction, and when they have spoken out, they’ve been ignored. An entire community can be opposed to a fossil fuel operation, and yet it’s allowed to proceed. This is a clear example of a democratic deficit. And this is only at the local level; at the national and global levels, it is the fossil fuel industry that continues to take precedence over our children’s future and our own future.
Do you believe that it’s the parties’ betrayal or the inherent flaws or inability of the ideologies to implement the transition and offer a sustainable society?
All of these ideologies came about at a time when the climate catastrophe was not a threat or a reality. None of them have an inherent understanding of the need to take the climate crisis seriously – instead, they’re based on the current system and are all closely linked to the capitalist system and the fossil fuel industry. Social democracy is also based on the exploitation of nature, so we need a completely different way of thinking where we don’t view nature as primarily there for us to use and exploit. We cannot continue to do so and think that we will be able to continue to exist.
There’s a very interesting book on this topic called “Half-Earth Socialism.” It discusses how socialism needs to be updated since it’s based on the exploitation of nature. The idea in the book is that half of the globe needs to be protected in order to secure biodiversity and slow down the climate catastrophe. It advocates a form of planned economy based on a sustainable system. Right now, there’s no ideology based on a sustainable system; everything is still just a compromise with capitalism or based on capitalism, believing that the market will solve everything. But there are no alternatives on the market that will solve this issue.
You also describe yourselves as a democracy movement, with citizens’ councils and people’s councils as a central issue – can you tell us more about this development of the movement?
We’ve been a democracy movement from the start. Throughout the A22 network, all movements are based on a clear demand that recognizes that there’s also a democratic deficit and that this type of radical resistance is not only resistance to the climate crisis but also resistance to the democratic deficit. It’s nothing new that we demonstrate on motorways, people have been doing it for decades. Throughout history, lots of people have done things that were considered extreme but which have pushed democracy forward. Inherent in the whole idea of the movement is also to show people that if you make up your mind, you can peacefully—if you create enough disruption in society—push society in a different direction.
Even though we’re a climate movement, we’ve managed to spark a lot of debate about civil disobedience and democracy. There’s been moves by politicians who want us to be classified as terrorists and imprisoned, which also says something about democracy. We want politicians to say these things, we want the Swedish Democrats and Moderaterna to say that we should be classified as terrorists, we want the climate minister to say that she is open to reviewing the sabotage law, because it exposes politicians, it forces them to take a stand, and then they clearly show that they stand for increased repression. The veil is being lifted.
Is there anything else you would like to add, any thoughts or reflections of your own?
Everyone has it in them to resist, to do much, much more than they think they can. Before I did my first action, sat in a cell, or went to trial, I never thought I would do any of those things. It has made me realize that few things are as effective as using yourself and your own body in the resistance, rather than carrying out symbolic acts from a distance. You don’t need to be many people to be able to change things, but we need to be more. I want to emphasize that we’re truly living in extremely critical times, and I believe that many people who perhaps want a different kind of society will feel like shit in the future about not having done more. There is so much information available nowadays that you can’t say you don’t know. You have to push yourself out of your comfort zone; it will crack anyway, and it’s much better to get out of it consciously, as your own choice, than to be thrown out. Because in the direction society is going now, there will be no welfare state to take care of its citizens when there’s no clean drinking water or food. If we think migration policy is terrible now, it will get even worse. And all of these things were predicted by oil companies back in the 1980s in their own reports, so it’s very clear where we’re headed. And you have to ask yourself if you can really live with letting that happen.
Editorial team, August 2025