NEWS • Direct exploitation of peatlands in Sweden remains a significant environmental concern in 2023, despite the EU efforts to mitigate its impact. Peatlands, abundant in Sweden’s land area, continue to be exploited by the peat extraction industry and drained for agricultural and infrastructure purposes.
Peatlands are a unique and precious environment.
They are wetlands, a term that refers to a variety of environments where water is typically abundant.
Most importantly, they are effective carbon sinks, contributing to the absorption of climate-altering gases. It is the richest carbon sink that we have so far.
“It is important to make people understand how much carbon there is in these ecosystems. Peatlands are the 3% of the total land area and it’s 1/3 of all the carbon on land. It’s massive. There’s much more carbon in a peatland than in a tropical forest. But it is a difficult idea to grasp because you don’t see the carbon, peat bogs look just like dead land”, Amelie Lindgren says.
Lindgren is a Swedish researcher, currently working at the University of Gothenburg’s Department of Earth Sciences. She is the head of the ongoing project “Exploring greenhouse gas emissions in wetlands: rewetted organic soils vs constructed agricultural ponds” in partnership with SGU (Geological Survey of Sweden).
Peatland drainage have been occurring in Europe since 1600 and for different purposes: agricultural crops, fuel, roads and railways. Fortunately, in Sweden, ‘we still have a large pristine area of peatland left. But Skåne and the region around Stockholm have lost 90% of its peatlands’, Lindgren says.
In Sweden the drainage activities in the southern areas have been done mostly for the agricultural sector. Since the 1800, peatlands were considered a very valuable resource before knowing their exploitation would be bad news for climate. From the late 1800, humans started to drain a lot of peatlands in Sweden, especially nutrient rich peatlands for crops, while in the 1930s the drainage was done for forestry.
Although the environmental threats caused by the disruption of this environment has been known for decades, the implementation of legally binding solutions to limit the peat mining industry is recent.
On August 18th 2024, the EU Nature Restoration Law enters into force. As the text recites, this law was implemented ‘to ensure the recovery of biodiverse and resilient nature across the Union territory’. The final objective is to mitigate climate change. In fact, the Nature Restoration Law is a response to the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity and part of the 2020 EU biodiversity strategy for 2030.
The law contains indications on the restoration and rewetting of wetlands and peatlands. In the legal text, restoration is treated not a synonym for rewetting, while the scientific community stresses the fact that to restore peatlands the rewetting is necessary.
In the ‘Active afforestation of drained peatlands is not a viable option under the EU Nature Restoration Law’ – a policy brief for the Nature Restoration Law – Lindgren and others researches pushed the narrative ‘if you want to do peatland restoration, you have to do rewetting’.
‘You cannot plant a forest on peat soil and call it a restoration in terms of climate. It doesn’t help to have trees on the land, because the soil is still going to break down, losing all CO2’, Lindgren says.
The Nature Restoration Law is deemed too loose and not legally binding. According to the law, restored peatlands can continue to be used productively. Profits and economic interests seem to come first: ‘if rewetting of drained peatland under agricultural use cannot be implemented due to considerable negative impacts on buildings, infrastructure, climate adaptation or other public interests […] Member States can reduce the extent of the rewetting of peatlands’.
According to Lindgren, prior to the Nature Restoration Law, Sweden did not have any legally binding target for the restoration of peatlands.
‘We had environmental quality objectives, presented already in the 1990s. One of these goals was called Thriving Wetlands’. This strategy was adopted by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the Swedish Board of Agriculture, the Swedish Forest Agency and the National Heritage Board.
Lingren complains that besides the intentions, there was no formal goal, meaning that nothing would happen if the goal is not reached. ‘And we’re not close to reaching that goal of having thriving wetlands in Sweden’.
Although the Swedish Environmental Code regulates land drainage, requiring permits for peat extraction activities in central parts of the southern Swedish highlands, old permits are an issue. A 30-year concession of a peatland obtained in a period where this environment was less protected, no one can do anything about it. The permit is still running.
However, the Swedish government increased the budget for rewetting drained wetlands by SEK 200 million annually from 2023. This initiative aims to halt CO2 emissions caused by drainage.
The direct exploitation of peatlands in Sweden continues to be a complex issue, balancing economic interests with urgent environmental concerns. While progress has been made in conservation efforts, the need for stricter regulations and more comprehensive rewetting programs remains evident to protect these valuable ecosystems and mitigate climate change impacts.