Summary
Between 2022 and 2024, Sweden's Restore Wetlands (Återställ Våtmarker) campaign successfully transformed a relatively unknown environmental issue into a national talking point through strategic civil disobedience. The campaign employed high-profile disruptive tactics and achieved significant success in agenda-setting, despite public disapproval of their methods.
Wetlands represent one of Sweden's most overlooked climate challenges. It’s estimated that depleted wetlands release up to 11 million tonnes of CO₂e annually, equivalent to 20% of Sweden's total emissions - more than the country's entire passenger car traffic. Despite this substantial climate impact, wetland restoration remained a niche issue with minimal public awareness before 2022. The Restore Wetlands campaign, inspired by the impact of UK's Insulate Britain, chose wetlands as their focus because this little known issue could be brought to light and there was clear impact potential. The group employed established tactics of modern disruptive activism over their two-year campaign, including highway blockades across major Swedish cities, disruptions of live TV shows including talent competitions and entertainment programs and museum protests.
In this analysis, we demonstrate the effect of the campaign in key areas:
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Media attention: The campaign achieved substantial media penetration. Media mentions of "wetlands" increased by approximately 84% during protest periods, with coverage doubling from baseline (2021) levels in 2022 and tripling in 2023. Over 95% of media coverage maintained neutral sentiment regarding wetlands themselves, suggesting journalists used protest tactics as hooks to discuss the substantive issue.
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Public recognition and opinion: Within eight months, Restore Wetlands had 61% name recognition among Swedish adults. While 70% of the public did not consider their tactics to be justified, 75% supported wetland restoration itself, indicating successful separation of message and methods. Later in the campaign there was some indication that support was declining.
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Parliamentary impact: Political discourse also shifted. Parliamentary mentions of wetlands roughly doubled during the campaign years compared to baseline periods. MPs across the political spectrum acknowledged the campaign's role in elevating wetlands on the political agenda, even when criticising the tactics.
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Voting intention effects: Polling analysis revealed that Restore Wetlands protests were associated with an overall 0.79 percentage point boost for pro-climate parties combined, representing approximately 51,200 additional votes for pro-environmental parties.
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Effects on the wider sector: Interviews with environmental organisations, academics, and industry representatives suggested that established environmental groups were able to ride the wave of attention generated by Restore Wetlands to advance their own work in this area.
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Limited but meaningful policy outcomes: While the campaign occurred during a period of overall environmental budget cuts under Sweden's center-right government, wetlands remained relatively protected. The government allocated SEK 765 million (over £55 million) through 2030 for wetland restoration, though some funding represented reallocation rather than new investment.
MPs across party lines acknowledged the campaign's policy influence, even when reluctant to credit activists directly. As one right-leaning MP noted:
"I felt very negative towards the strategy... But I will say that they are not wrong. And it has also led up to us and our government deciding to put forward money towards restoration of wetlands."
The campaign's success came with documented downsides. In interviews, politicians expressed their concern about the campaign polarising a potentially consensus issue and alienating rural landowners (whose cooperation is essential for restoration projects). Experimental research found that exposure to guerrilla restoration actions decreased public support for wetland restoration, suggesting backlash effects from novel tactics.
Yet these negative effects appeared limited. Importantly, no evidence emerged of increased support for anti-climate parties, contradicting common concerns about disruptive protest backlash.
This analysis points to some strategic insights for the climate movement.
Message can be separated from method: Despite widespread tactical disapproval, public support for wetland restoration remained strong, suggesting audiences can distinguish between methods and messages more than often assumed.
Specificity drives success: The campaign's focused approach on few, concrete demands in an uncontroversial area provided clear hooks for media and ensured that its message was instantly intelligible to the public and policymakers alike.
Agenda-setting vs. policy change: While direct policy wins were limited, the campaign's agenda-setting success created conditions for longer-term policy development and mobilisation of the wider sector active in wetland restoration.
Timing matters: Operating during the tenure of a conservative government limited policy gains but the campaign may have prevented deeper cuts to environmental programs.
The evidence suggests that even deeply unpopular tactics can drive meaningful social change when employed with clear messaging, specific demands, and realistic expectations. It also points to the importance of complimentary approaches and combining disruptive protests with others alongside - institutional advocacy, community organising, and sector engagement - to see wins translated into real world benefits.
Cover image provided by Återställ Våtmarker.
Contents
Summary
Contents
Introduction
Why wetlands?
Why civil disobedience?
When was the campaign?
Research design and methods
Results
Public opinion
Media coverage
Voting intentions
Influence on the sector
Policy and political discourse
Political discourse: the Riksdag record
Policy effects
Conclusion
Endnotes
About Social Change Lab
Acknowledgements
References
Appendix
Introduction
Restore Wetlands (Återställ Våtmarker) is a Swedish environmental campaign group set up in spring 2022. The group uses civil disobedience tactics such as roadblocks and disruption of live TV events to raise awareness and generate support for their cause. When the campaign began, their main demand was for the Swedish government to commit to a complete restoration of Swedish wetlands; decades of peat mining and excavation have degraded them, releasing vast amounts of CO₂.
On April 24th 2024 the group declared “Our job with the wetlands is done.” They said that 75% of Swedes now support their cause and that the government pledge to increase spending (the 2024 budget announced SEK 765 million (more than £55m) by 2030 to restore degraded wetlands) meant their actions had been successful.
In this research, we investigate the impact of the Restore Wetlands campaign, to assess their claim of success. We use quantitative and qualitative data including media analysis, analysis of parliamentary mentions, public opinion polls, and interviews with policy makers, academics, NGOs, analysts and the Restore Wetlands campaigners themselves to assess and quantify the effectiveness of their two years of campaigning.
Why wetlands?
Wetlands are semi-aquatic ecosystems that exist in various forms, including marshes, swamps, and mangrove forests. They are characterised by being flooded or saturated in water either all the time, or seasonally. Wetlands have many ecological benefits: they help purify water, stabilise shorelines, and control flooding. They are also important for carbon fixation and sequestration and can help mitigate climate change by acting as carbon sinks. Wetland ecology is complex, and wetlands can also act as sources of carbon and methane emissions.
In Sweden, the share of wetlands has decreased sharply over recent decades, due to their being drained to make agricultural land, extend the forestry industry and harvest peat for fuel. Naturskyddsforeningen (the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation) estimates that 75 percent of Swedish wetlands below mountain level are depleted. When wetlands are kept wet, the plant parts within them remain soaked, so the plants do not break down and the carbon they contain stays in the ground. When the soil is dried out - as in depleted wetlands - the peat releases that bound carbon. What was a carbon sink becomes a carbon emitter.
In Sweden, drained peatland emits roughly 11 million tonnes of CO₂e each year, according to Naturvårdsverket, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. This amounts to around 20% of Sweden’s annual emissions, greater than the annual emissions from Sweden’s passenger car traffic.
Why civil disobedience?
“People don’t sit on the highways just either way, they’re sitting there because they have a very strong message and it’s about the carbon collapse.” Helen Wahlgren, co-founder of Restore Wetlands (Återställ Våtmarker).
Restore Wetlands (Återställ Våtmarker) is a member of the A22 network, an international community of organisations “committed to mass civil disobedience” using their “recipe for effective civil resistance”. The Restore Wetlands core team followed the success of the UK’s Insulate Britain campaign the previous year. In particular, they were impressed that the group had achieved such high levels of recognition so quickly: 68% of people knew “a great deal” or “ a fair amount” about the group within just 3 weeks of the start of their campaign. They also saw that the group had been very successful in generating media attention, for example having their spokespeople invited to speak on some of the most widely viewed TV news and current affairs programmes, significantly raising awareness about the need to insulate homes.
Photograph by Lilla Kroksjö, SW part, Vättlefjäll nature reserve, Gothenburg municipality, Sweden on July 31, 2024. Licensed CC BY 4.0
Since Restore Wetlands had chosen to campaign on a topic somewhat unfamiliar to many Swedes, the group felt they would need considerable media attention to draw public attention to the issue. They believed, based on the success of other groups in the A22 network, that high profile disruptive actions were the most effective way to generate such attention. Their key demands were (and remain) for the government to restore wetlands and prohibit peat mining.
In addition to the decision to prioritise disruptive actions, the group made other important early strategic choices. Like Insulate Britain, their key campaign demand was encapsulated in their organisation’s name, meaning that any media coverage (even if negative) would be bound to keep restating and reiterating their demand. In terms of presentation, the colours of the Restore Wetlands banners and other materials used the blue and yellow of the Swedish flag. Through this visual cue, the campaign sought to make wetland restoration a non-partisan issue, but rather a shared mission that could unite different groups around a sense of national pride and the desire to conserve Sweden’s precious natural world.
When was the campaign?
The campaign began in Spring 2022 and continued with regular actions until victory was declared two years later, on 22nd April 2024. The actions drew on the full playbook of modern disruptive tactics: blockading major motorways, jumping on stage at major live TV events such as talent and entertainment shows, throwing soup at high profile paintings, slow walks through city centres and disruptions at sporting events. They also engaged in guerilla wetland restoration attempts. The key actions are shown in the campaign timeline in figure 1.
Figure 1. Timeline. Key events in the campaign between its inception in March 2022 and declaration of victory in April 2024.
Research design and methods
Campaigns such as Restore Wetlands can have an impact on environmental quality in multiple direct and indirect ways. Figure 2 is adapted from Thomas-Walters et al, 2025, an analysis based on the effects of 50 recent studies of climate activism. It shows the main pathways by which protests can impact the environment, chiefly through their influence on climate policy. Climate policy itself is influenced by many factors, both internally driven (e.g. the needs of a particular governing party or coalition) and externally driven (e.g. public opinion). The visible factors that protest can influence include changes in public and media discourse, alteration of voting intentions and behaviour, influence on other actors in the climate sector, and garnering policymaker attention. The suggested relationship between these factors is illustrated in figure 2.
Figure 2. The pathways by which protests can affect the desired outcome of improved environmental quality. Pathways can be facilitative or inhibitory.
For our analysis, we studied these different factors, from public discourse to policymaker attention, using quantitative and qualitative proxies, described in detail in each relevant section.
Results
Public opinion
First, by way of setting the context, we consider the Swedish public’s attitudes to climate; this is to give a sense of how receptive the general public was likely to be to the issue of wetlands, based on their more general level of concern for the environment. 79% of Swedes believe in climate change and think it's a serious threat to humanity (Vlasceanu et al., 2024). 66% of Swedes support policies to tackle climate change (support measured on a scale from 0 to 100 across interventions such as carbon taxes on fossil fuels, expanding public transport, more renewable energy, taxes on airlines etc). 85% of Swedes think their government should do more to tackle climate change (Andre et al., 2024).
In terms of where climate sits alongside other issues of importance to Swedes, national polling company Novus conducts regular polling of representative samples. For example, a recurring poll asks “What political issues do you think are most important?” and climate and environment typically come around 5th or 6th in importance. Between 31% and 42% of the population think it is one of the most important political issues, as in this poll from December 2024.
Turning to specific data about public attitudes to the Restore Wetlands campaign, a survey was carried out between November 9th and 12th 2022, by Kantar Sifo, one of Sweden’s respected and longest established public polling organisations. The survey was based on a representative sample of 1,130 Swedes and asked both about attitudes to the issue of wetland restoration and about knowledge of and attitudes towards the group and its methods.
As with other groups who have engaged in high profile civil disobedience, Restore Wetlands achieved a very high level of name recognition very quickly. Within a few months of their existence (from April 2022 to November that year), they had gained name recognition from over 61% of the general public [endnote 1]. About half of these people ‘just knew the name’, while the other half - nearly a third of the whole population - knew at least ‘something’ about the group (figure 3).
Figure 3. Public opinion on familiarity with the Restore Wetlands campaign group.
As we know from other work (Feinberg et al, 2020; Fuller et al., 2025; Young & Thomas-Walters, 2024) disruptive protest tends not to be well received by the public. People often think that protesters should target those responsible rather than the public, who are not in a position to act on political demands. In line with this previous evidence from other countries, the majority of respondents did not think the actions of the group were justified (figure 4). 70% of the population felt the actions were ‘quite’ or ‘very’ unjustified.
Figure 4. Public opinion on the justifiability of the actions of the Restore Wetlands campaign?
Regarding public opinion, what we are really interested in is opinion on the issue of wetland restoration itself, rather than the group Restore Wetlands - the message of the campaign, rather than the campaign itself. There are previously documented examples, such as Kenward & Brick’s (2024) analysis of the 2019 London campaign of Extinction Rebellion, of campaigns that did not have the support of the majority of the population yet had primarily positive impact on environmental attitudes (see also Shuman et al., 2021).
To assess public opinion on wetland restoration, we draw first on some experimental work (Kenward, 2024), which although somewhat outside the timeframe of this work, is otherwise relevant. Large representative samples of the Swedish population were shown descriptions of disruptive actions - a motorway blockade and a disruptive guerilla restoration action - and subsequently asked (along with a control group) about environmental attitudes. The results showed that while exposure to the motorway blockade had no measurable effect, exposure to the guerilla restoration action had a small negative effect on public support for wetland restoration. One explanation is that the public’s unfamiliarity with guerilla restorations may be behind this backlash effect since novelty of information is important for one-shot influence on opinion. An alternative explanation is that the findings reflect increasing frustration with disruptive tactics over time.
Unfortunately, we do not have baseline data to show what public opinion on wetland restoration was before the campaign began, though there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that public knowledge on the issue was low (see later interviews with MPs and others in the sector). Given this prior low visibility of the issue of wetlands, it is particularly striking that, in this same survey, 75% of people said they believed wetland restoration to be ‘quite’ or ‘very’ important. See figure 5.
We will later show data from a range of interviewees who describe, amongst other things, how unknown the issue of wetland restoration was amongst the general public in the period before the Restore Wetlands campaign. Although this data is not statistically quantifiable, there was a notably high level of consensus amongst people with very different political positions on this point.
Figure 5. Public opinion on the importance of wetland restoration in Sweden.
To summarise, Sweden is a country with a high level of awareness and support for climate action. Restore Wetlands generated a very high level of public recognition in a very short space of time. While the majority of people believed that their disruptive actions were not justified, there was an extremely high level of support during this same period for the restoration of wetlands. While this shows correlation rather than cause, it does allow us to state with some certainty that the campaign did not put people off the issue of restoring wetlands, at least not initially. The analysis below attempts to establish whether and to what extent there is evidence for a causal relationship between the campaign and support for wetland restoration.
Media coverage
A key rationale for the use of dramatic disruptive actions is that they will be widely reported by the media (Feinberg et al., 2020; Light, 2023). This has been true for many groups in the A22 network and it was also true for Restore Wetlands. Figure 6 shows the number of daily mentions of ‘våtmarker’ (wetlands) in Swedish media in the years preceding the campaign and during it.
Figure 6. Media mentions of the term ‘våtmarker’ (wetlands) 2020-2024. The Restore Wetlands campaign began in March 2022.
Although these data appear to tell a story, these are just crude numbers. In order to tie media mentions more directly to the work of the campaign, figure 7 shows media mentions by day (data based on searches for mentions of the term ‘våtmarker’ on the media monitoring platform Meltwater) plotted against the dates of key campaign actions. Note that some were one-off actions such as TV event disruption (with a single day’s date) while others were campaign ‘waves’, which lasted for periods of up to several weeks, with multiple actions often daily, and usually involving blocking roads.
Figure 7. Media mentions of the term ‘våtmarker’ plotted against dates of campaign actions. Red dotted lines show one off actions (such as disruption of a live event). Red bands show ‘action waves’, involving weeks of daily protests. Blue lines show the number of media mentions
To assess statistically whether these protest events were associated with increased media coverage of wetlands, we fitted a Bayesian negative binomial time-series model using the brms package in R. The model regressed daily media mention counts (in the years 2022–2024) of the term ‘våtmarker’ (wetlands) on an indicator variable (Affected), which marked all days on which a protest occurred (according to the ACLED database), as well as the six following days. This seven-day window was chosen to capture the expectation that coverage is not limited to the day of a protest but that there also tend to be delayed media responses and follow-up commentary (as we and others have found in previous work). The full details of the analysis are in the appendix.
The estimated incident-rate ratio (IRR) for media mentions during protest-affected days relative to baseline days was 1.84, with a 95% credible interval from 1.51 to 2.27. The analysis thus suggests that media mentions increased by ~84% when protests happened, with the most likely increases ranging from 51% to 127%.
In tone, media reporting of disruptive actions generally tends to be negative, usually focusing on the perceived unjustifiability of extreme actions targeting the public and punishment / repression by authorities. Interestingly, when we look at the valence of reporting about wetlands here (again using the media analysis site Meltwater [endnote 2]) the vast majority of articles (over 95%) are rated as ‘neutral’. It is unlikely that these articles are neutral on the protest tactics, so this instead suggests that much reporting contained discussion on the more neutral topic of wetland restoration itself. The campaign tactics acted as a dramatic ‘hook’ for journalists to write about wetlands, in a way where they could then broaden their writing to include a wider discussion of the issue of wetland restoration.
Figure 8. Sentiment of media reporting on articles mentioning wetlands, April 2022 to April 2024, based on Meltwater sentiment analysis.
In summary, media mentions of “wetlands” increased significantly after the Restore Wetlands campaign began; mentions in Swedish media doubled in 2022, compared to baseline (2021) levels, and tripled in 2023. When we look in more detail at the links between days or periods of actions, we can see media mentions increased by ~84% when protests happened, with the most likely increases ranging from 51% to 127%, suggesting the campaign was extremely effective at amplifying the issue of wetlands restoration in the media.
Voting intentions
Here we review evidence regarding the impact of the Restore Wetlands campaign on voting intentions. For background, since the 2022 election, Sweden has been governed by a centre-right coalition led by the Moderate Party, with support from the Christian Democrats and Liberals, and external backing from the Sweden Democrats, whose inclusion marks a significant rightward shift. The opposition is led by the centre-left Social Democrats, with the Green Party, Left Party, and Centre Party also in opposition. While many parties in Sweden have shown some support for environmental and climate action in the past, the parties most associated with progressive climate action are the Green Party, the Left Party and the Centre Party, which historically represents rural interests including environmental protection. We should note that although the Centre Party has traditionally supported various green policies, its record in Government has been mixed, drawing criticism from some environmental groups (see Naturskyddsföreningen, 2022).
To more formally assess parties’ support for climate policies, we generated a classification using GPT-4o (ChatGPT, April 2025), via Deep Research, drawing on publicly available information including:
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Policy commitments (manifestos, targets)
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Legislative records (voting behaviour, implementation)
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Public statements and party communications
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Expert assessments (e.g. Greenpeace, Carbon Brief, Naturskyddsföreningen)
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Public perception (voter surveys and party reputation)
Parties were scored on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly anti-environmental) to 7 (strongly pro-environmental), and received labels to categorise their climate change stance more broadly: “Anti” (1–2), “Neutral/Mixed” (3–4), or “Pro” (5–7). A broader range (5–7) was allocated to the “Pro” category than other categories to reflect important nuance among supportive parties. A score of 5 includes parties that are at least nominally pro-climate and support some action, though cautiously or inconsistently. Scores 6 and 7 are reserved for parties that treat climate change as a core issue and align closely with climate science. The model’s outputs were cross-checked independently by team members, who confirmed the analysis and the classification’s validity. Table 1 gives a summary of this analysis.
Table 1. Political parties in Sweden, approximating their climate positions
To assess the impact of the Restore Wetlands campaign on voting intention, we use polling data that tracks voting intention in the next general election, over a two-year period (Jan 2022 to Dec 2023). We use polls from PolitPro (https://politpro.eu), a platform that collects daily polls from across Europe. Our protest data comes from ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data), a database tracking protest and conflict data across the world. Both organisations’ data are of high quality, widely used and regularly updated and monitored. In Sweden, there were 167 voting intention polls from 119 polling days [endnote 3].
We used a pre/post design to compare voting intention before and after climate protests. We used a variant of ‘Unexpected Event Study Design’ (UESD) which uses the occurrence of an unexpected event while a poll is in the field to measure the impact of that event on a certain variable, by comparing average levels of that variable before and after the unexpected event. The design is used to measure the impact of a variety of real world events, from terror attacks to political scandals to epidemics; it has also been used to study the effects of protests (Munoz et al. 2020). We vary the UESD slightly by comparing the results of polls taken within seven days after a protest to an average of three polls at least seven days before the protest.
The analysis found that protests by Restore Wetlands were associated with an estimated rise of 0.45 percentage points in voting intention for the Centerpartiet / Centre Party (CrI [0.1, 0.8]).
Overall, there appears to be a pattern whereby more pro-climate parties benefit from Restore Wetland’s protests relative to more anti-climate parties. Indeed, the analysis by climate favourability reveals an interaction between a party’s climate favourability score (1-7) and the protest dummy variable indicating whether protests happened, such that a one-unit increase in climate favourability is associated with a 0.07 ppt gain in voting intention from climate protests (CrI [0.003, 0.14]). Assuming that people would vote as they indicated, this would correspond to a 4,500 gain in votes per one-unit increase in climate favourability. Collectively, the effects for parties classified as “pro-climate” represent a rise in voting intention of 0.79 ppts toward pro-climate parties. This would correspond to an additional 51,200 votes for pro-climate parties. It is also interesting to note that, contrary to common concerns about the risks of backfire effects from disruptive protests, these results do not show evidence of a strong polarising effect, whereby such actions also risk increasing support for anti-climate parties. The relative impact of these effects is quite substantial. For example, the estimated gain of 0.45 ppts for the Swedish Centerpartiet represents a nearly 7% shift relative to their vote share of around 6-7% in 2022/23.
Figure 9. Impact of Restore Wetlands protests on voting intention per party. Dots represent the posterior median estimates for the effect of protests on voting intention. Thick horizontal bars indicate 66% credible intervals, and thin lines represent 95% credible intervals. The shape of the surrounding distribution visualises the posterior probability density for each estimate.
In summary, the actions of the Restore Wetlands campaign had a small but consistent impact on voting intentions in favour of more pro-climate parties. In particular, the Centre Party saw gains in support as a result of the protests. There was no evidence from these results that the protests led to increased support for anti-climate parties, as measured by voting intentions.
Influence on the sector
One way that protests can influence outcomes is by affecting the work of others working on the same or similar issues. For example, Black Lives Matter protests, by opening the conversation around unlawful police practices, facilitated the work of those who were already arguing for defunding or restructuring the police (Wright II et al., 2023). Here, we consider how the high visibility of the Restore Wetlands campaign affected those who were already working on wetland restoration. The evidence comes from six interviews with representatives of the most prominent Swedish environmental charities, academic experts in wetland restoration and representatives from the agricultural and forestry industries. In addition, early on in the research, we interviewed the core team of the Restore Wetlands campaign to understand more about their rationale for choosing wetland restoration as their initial focus.
All interviewees were asked the same set of questions (see Appendix). Their answers were transcribed manually in preparation for a thematic analysis (Terry et al., 2017). The three overarching themes drawn from the interviews were as follows:
1. The campaign got the issue of wetlands on the agenda in ways others couldn't
2. The increased attention on wetlands helped some working on the issue
3. There were a range of criticisms including risks of over-simplification and polarisation
To elaborate on these in turn:
1. The campaign got the issue of wetlands on the agenda in ways others couldn't
Many interviewees found restoring wetlands a surprising choice for a protest campaign. Most were accustomed to the idea that, working on wetlands, they were working in a niche area. So it was something of a shock to find that niche area so emphatically thrust into the spotlight. ”I was surprised, I would say, because at that time it was not so much a discussion in the media, not so many people knew about it,” said one academic expert, “It felt comical for me and my group to hear how important wetlands are, being wetland researchers ourselves.” Another said, “Many people thought it was very strange to begin with…As a wetland researcher I was surprised and happy that this ecosystem was lifted into public discussion.”
Interviewees noted that what first drew attention was the tactics which, according to an interviewee from a large environmental organisation, had “huge impact, that's where it had the greatest effect. Media loves activists, when they glue themselves to motorways, etc...The media breakthrough was total.” This attention on the tactics led to a great deal of attention on the issue, “I think the campaign raised awareness of wetlands among the broader public. Even though it received a lot of hateful and negative attention I think it really did raise the issue and brought light to the importance of wetlands very quickly.” All interviewees, even those who did not support the methods, acknowledged the strong effect on public discourse and opinion: “Absolutely…[the protests] contributed to changing people’s view on these ecosystems from wastelands to valuable land.” “Probably more than ten times as many persons in the country has grasped that disturbed wetlands could have a negative impact on climate, as would have been the case otherwise.”
2. The increased attention on wetlands helped some working on the issue
Interviewees were split on the extent to which their own work was affected by the campaign. Some said that it didn’t really have any direct impact. Others benefited from the increased salience; a wetlands academic expert said, “I get more opportunities to talk about it in the media. They want to know the scientific basis, to understand the issue.” And “You could say… it became more public and people understood more what we work with… and that was very positive.” A representative from a mainstream environmental organisation said, “We have very different strategies, but share the same goals... We’ve worked with/for restoration of wetlands for decades, but ÅV drew public attention to the topic.” Others felt it both helped and hindered; “It both made it easier to talk about wetlands due to the raised awareness of the topic, but also difficult to navigate a balanced perspective and a misconception about our role versus environmental activism.”
One interviewee, a wetlands researcher, mentioned a tangible example of other organisations taking advantage of the increased interest in wetlands. In January 2023, three of the largest Swedish environmental organisations (the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, the Swedish Association of Farmers and the World Wildlife Fund) wrote an open letter to the Minister for Climate and the Environment pushing for greater investment in the re-wetting of wetlands in the imminent budget bill. Another added, “Naturskyddsföreningen [the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation]... their book of the year is “Wetlands” and they just released a film on how to plug ditches in wetlands. This is probably the most important environmental organisation in Sweden with ~200,000 members so the fact that they are taking up wetlands is a good step in increasing awareness in a more subdued way. I would guess this is piggybacking off the popularity gained by the protests.”
Interviewees largely agreed that politicians heard this new discussion about wetland restoration and were minded to act on it. Some felt that this led to some discernible action; “They’ve implemented policies - weak, but still - to promote restoration of wetlands.” Another, a forestry expert, felt that most of what changed was the order of priorities; “It was already politically identified that the problem existed and they were planning to work on it. But it was put even more on the agenda.”
Others were more optimistic that tangible new money was made available; “I think they encouraged increased budgets towards wetland restoration,” said one wetlands researcher. Another directly attributed this to the actions of Restore Wetlands, “I think the focus on specific funding for wetlands we’ve seen in recent years was directly influenced by the campaign.”
3. There were a range of criticisms, including risks of over-simplification and polarisation
The tactics were hard to swallow, even for those supportive of the message, and many felt disruptive tactics carry risks, the most serious being polarisation. One agriculture expert said, “I noticed that there were two camps, some who hated the activism, some who thought it was quite OK.” Another interviewee, an academic, agreed, “Unfortunately, I think the protests divided people but I think there is a cultural dimension to this. Swedes tend to not like anything extreme.”
The first danger of polarisation is that a previously uncontroversial area becomes more political, perversely stalling progress; “In some ways it made it difficult to work with wetlands and environmental issues when there was so much hostility and negative attention surrounding that space,” said a forestry expert. Another agreed, “I don't like it when things get too polarised. People started to get quite upset and I was afraid it could have negative effects on rewetting.” An environmental organisation representative said, “I have definitely received comments from landowners whose buy-in is needed for many rewetting projects about their actions and also negative questions about whether we belong to the same organisation…We do not know if the protests have ‘disdained’ or encouraged landowners more.“
Another danger interviewees raised is that that the negativity towards the tactics could have a negative effect on public opinion on related issues; “[I am] worried that it could affect attitudes to environmental issues more broadly...Even if the purpose of the demos is good people might have more negative views on the methods.” And a final polarisation risk is that the antagonism of disruption helps to fuel the flames of climate skeptic opponents, “In the short term, activism can be good at raising an issue, absolutely, but over time we lose more. We have gotten this group that is negative towards wetlands, and it's growing now.”
The second main criticism concerned oversimplification of the complex issue of wetland restoration. While on the one hand, interviewees saw the benefits of focusing on a surprising but simple and understandable issue - “The advantage is that it clarifies a problem. Activism focuses attention on a certain problem or phenomenon, and they succeeded with that here…” - they also felt that this meant it was hard to communicate the complexity of the issue of wetland restoration - “...The disadvantages are that the focus can be wrong.” For some, particularly those who understand the complexities of the different effects of rewetting on different types of wetland ecosystems, the protests minimised this complexity; “I think that their protests made the question a little too easy, too flat, too simplistic. There is a risk that the current gov [sic] now thinks rewetting is great - no matter however whenever we do it,” said a wetlands researcher. Another agreed, “I thought some of their asks were overly simplified concerning the message that wetlands [restoration] was a solution to most climatic and biodiversity loss issues. The rhetoric was a little too black and white in my opinion.”
In summary, those working on wetlands mostly felt benefits from ‘their’ issue becoming much better known and more widely discussed as a result of the Restore Wetlands campaign. Despite the fact that most found the tactics uncomfortable, the marked increase in public and political recognition, brought about in part by the surprise of this topic being highlighted in such a dramatic way, meant that wetland restoration gained more traction. The downsides of the campaign were chiefly the risk of oversimplification of a complex issue caused by the messaging and the risk of polarisation caused by the tactics.
Policy and political discourse
A centrepiece of climate activists’ theory of change is typically influencing policy outcomes. To assess policy impact systematically, we looked at both political discourse and policy in two ways. The first was qualitative. We interviewed MPs from across the political spectrum who all sit on the Environment and Agriculture Committee, to garner their views on the campaign and its effects on various outcomes including policy. The second was quantitative; we searched the Riksdag record for mentions of campaign relevant terms. We were interested primarily in whether there was an increase in discussion of wetlands within parliament and secondarily whether there was direct mention of the campaign itself. Increased mentions in parliament demonstrate heightened interest and engagement from parliamentarians, who face intense competition for attention across numerous issues. The inclusion of an issue in parliamentary discourse is a key step in the agenda-setting stage of policy making, as emphasised in political science literature (Bernardi et al., 2021; Walgrave & Vliegenthart2012; Wasow, 2020). We will take these in turn.
Interviews with Swedish MPs
To gain an understanding of the campaign's impact on the political system, we carried out extensive interviews with MPs. The Swedish Environment and Agriculture Committee (Miljö-och jordbruksutskottet) is the parliamentary committee responsible for scrutinising legislation and government policy relating to the environment, agriculture, forestry, hunting, fishing, and animal welfare. The committee plays a key role in shaping Sweden’s environmental and rural policies through reviewing government proposals, initiating legislation, and overseeing policy implementation. The committee includes representatives from the eight main political parties, all of whom were approached to be interviewed for this report. For the final report, we interviewed seven MPs, representing all parties except the Liberal party, who did not respond to our requests.
All MPs were asked the same questions (listed in the appendix) concerning the effects of the campaign on a range of outcomes, including public opinion and discourse, parliamentary discourse and policy on wetlands. They were also asked about any negative effects. Below, we group the themes that emerged from these interviews into ‘convergent themes’ where there was broad agreement across political groups, and ‘divergent themes’ where there were strongly differing opinions.
It is interesting to note that while some responses fell very much along party lines, this was by no means always the case. A paradigmatic example is this quote, from an MP representing a right leaning, anti-climate party:
“I felt very negative towards the strategy, how they decided to go about this. The disruption in society targeting roads and there was one case when they threw soup at a painting in a museum - very negative. But I will say that they are not wrong. And it has also led up to us and our government deciding to put forward money towards restoration of wetlands. The message is clear and they’re not wrong in what they are trying to get accomplished.”
Convergent themes
1. Agreement that the campaign raised the salience of wetland restoration
There was very broad consensus that the campaign got people talking more about the issue of wetland restoration: “The main effect is that people know what wetlands are.” Even those who argued that the protests did not move the dial of political action because wetland restoration was already on the table, acknowledged this, “Wetlands have been an ongoing topic in environmental discussions regardless of activism… Media coverage of the protests may have briefly brought attention to the issue.” Others had a more strongly positive reading of the campaign's political effects. One said, “[The main effect of the campaign was] making the restoration of wetlands a political priority.” And another agreed, “They put the issue on the agenda…The government started communicating wetland restoration as a priority. That would probably never have happened without this campaign, since very few people were aware of the problem.”
Some felt that the clear, singular messaging of the campaign really helped the cause; “I think it's very smart to focus on one issue and not say we need to save the climate - that’s very non-specific so hard to get specific action. We need to restore more wetlands, that’s clear and you can take actions.” Others were less sure about the benefits of the singular focus; “The topic was raised but to the cost of the wider movement. Set a new standard but pushed down other topics e.g. other climate issues.”
2. Condemnation of the methods
Even MPs whose parties have policies proposing much greater action on climate did not condone tactics which targeted and inconvenienced the public. For some, this was because of the fear that the dramatic methods would themselves become the talking point, rather than the message. As one put it, “One possible negative effect is that disruptive protests can sometimes alienate the public and shift focus away from the substantive issue toward the methods used by activists.” Others were more direct. “Their methods were crap - I sympathise with their goals but not their methods.” And some were outright offended by them: “I hope the effects will be harder punishments for them…I hear them scream outside my work and they disturb me a lot.”
3. Concordance with the message
Nearly all parties support some degree of wetland restoration, with the exception of the most rightwing parties; as one put it to us, “It’s not necessary to restore wetlands in general.” The majority believe wetland restoration to be somewhere between a useful tool in assisting climate resilience and reducing emissions - “[Our party has] continued and expanded efforts to restore wetlands as part of broader environmental and climate policy” - to those who believe it is one of the most promising avenues “It’s one of the most useful tools we have.” Of particular interest is one MP from a centre party who said, in response to the question of what their party’s policy is on wetlands, “More a general [sic] - we need to work towards better diversity and resilience and climate change - wetlands were not a specific area, we did not have a specific policy position. And now we do.”
Divergent themes
1. Backlash and polarisation - some felt the campaign had strong negative effects, others did not
Two frequently heard claims about disruptive protests are that they polarise an issue, causing both supporters and dissenters to entrench and extend their positions, and that they cause backlash, the tactics putting people off to the extent they are also put off the issue.
Several MPs interviewed alluded to these sorts of negative effects. One clearly expressed ideas about polarisation effects, “Those who like the organisation like the protests and its methods. Those who dislike the organisation and its actions will be more negatively inclined towards it.” Another said, “I think that the tactics risked making the message seem harder - what do they even want? They are just crazy so it can’t be that important”. And another put things even more starkly, “[They] divided public opinion into camps. Most thought they were crazy. Ruining stuff and being ecoterrorists.”
Others alluded to wider negative effects, “[The campaign] destroyed economic value, increased polarisation, made citizens turn away from environmental organisations…” said one. Alluding to the fear of a strong backlash effect, one MP added,“People become critical and act entirely opposed to the desired ends of the organisation.”
However, for other interviewees, these fears were more theoretical than real. That is, ordinary people are more than capable of differentiating methods from messages. As one put it, “One possible negative effect is that disruptive protests can sometimes alienate the public and shift focus away from the substantive issue toward the methods used by activists… (but) I believe many people support wetland restoration while disapproving of disruptive protest methods.”
2. While most agreed there was increased political discourse, there was disagreement as to whether this amounted to more than rhetoric
A problem with trying to ascertain the policy impact of disruptive protests is that politicians are rarely minded to acknowledge the role of activists. As one MP pointed out, even getting into a debate with protesters would be controversial (“political suicide”) as it would be read as acceptance of the methods. They put it, “The tactics around it made it impossible for me to engage with them. I would never sit in the same room as them and have a conversation.”
Another agreed; “No one wants to use the activists as the reason for doing this [wetland restoration]. No party wants to say that we are pleasing them by giving them money or doing things. We don’t want to give them the credit for anything that is happening.”
Others emphasised that politicians are too rational to be swayed by popular protest. “Parliamentary debate on wetlands has primarily been shaped by scientific evidence and policy discussions rather than activism. I have not observed any major shifts in debate directly linked to the protests.”
Political discourse: The Riksdag record
Sweden’s political system is founded on strong principles of openness, enshrined in the Freedom of the Press Act since 1766. The act guarantees the public the right to access most documents held by government authorities without needing to provide a reason. This means a particularly high level of access to all documents and to any minuted discussions within parliamentary offices.
To assess the political discourse around wetlands within the Riksdag, we use the search categorisation of ‘Web TV’ on the Riksdag database. This category captures real-time, spoken references to topics, encompassing video recordings of all public meetings and seminars held by the Swedish Parliament including:
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Debates and decisions in the Chamber, such as interpellation debates, question-and-answer sessions, party leader and foreign policy debates
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Public hearings and seminars conducted by parliamentary committees and the Committee on EU Affairs
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Ceremonial events like the opening of the Riksdag session and Chamber elections
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Certain press conferences and events
This measure is more likely to reflect change in political discourse than a search of the Riksdag archive (which includes internal meeting notes, administrative discussions, staff meetings, private negotiations between parties or MPs, drafting sessions etc which are of less relevance). Even without a formal motion or bill, if MPs begin talking more frequently about a topic, this would appear in Web TV and not necessarily in written documents. All ‘WebTV’ broadcasts are publicly available.
We looked at mentions of ‘våtmarker’ (‘wetlands) and ‘återställ AND våtmarker’ (‘restore’ and ‘wetlands’) in year-length clusters before and after the wetlands campaign - March 2018 to March 2019, March 2019 to March 2020 and so on up to March 2025. We should note that interpretation of anything which covers this period is complicated by the occurrence of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the period from March 2020 for roughly two years, there were adjustments put in place regarding in-person sittings in the Swedish parliament. Normally, all 349 MPs participate in votes and debates in the chamber, but during much of the pandemic, only 55 MPs, proportionally representing all parties, were present in the chamber at any one time. During this period, however, the Riksdag continued to broadcast public meetings and seminars via its Web TV, and the number of Web TV events remained relatively consistent, since open communication with the public was particularly important during this period.
The numbers of mentions of these two key terms over the period 2018 to 2025 is shown in figure 10.
Figure 10. Mentions of ‘Vatmarker’ (red) and ‘Aterstall AND Vatmarker’ (blue) from March 2018 to March 2025. The Restore Wetlands campaign began in March 2022.
We analysed whether the frequency of parliamentary references to wetlands changed during and after the campaign using a Bayesian binomial regression [endnote 4]. For each year from 2018/19 to 2024/25, we counted the number of Riksdag events archived on Web TV that included (i) the general term “våtmarker” (wetlands) or (ii) the full name “återställ våtmarker” (Restore Wetlands). Based on official schedules and archive size, we estimated 800 relevant public events per year.
We grouped years into four periods:
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Pre-campaign baseline (2018/19–2021/22)
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Campaign Year 1 (2022/23)
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Campaign Year 2 (2023/24)
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Post campaign (2024/25)
The results of the analysis are summarised in Table 2. Mentions of both “våtmarker” and “återställ våtmarker” roughly doubled during the campaign years relative to baseline (estimated odds ratios ≈ 2.0 - 2.65), with credible intervals excluding 1, suggesting a campaign-period spike in salience. Post-campaign mentions returned to or near baseline. All model code is available in the Appendix.
Table 2. Posterior odds-ratios from Bayesian binomial models estimating the likelihood of parliamentary mentions of “restore wetlands” and “wetlands” across campaign phases (relative to the pre-campaign baseline, 2018/19–2021/22). Each odds-ratio represents the multiplicative change in the probability of a mention in a Riksdag session. Boldface indicates statistically credible increases (95% credible interval excludes 1).
The findings provide strong evidence that wetlands became a more salient topic in parliamentary discourse during the campaign, with MPs raising the issue verbally, questioning ministers, or referencing wetlands in speeches. The evidence shows that wetlands gained rhetorical and symbolic attention in the Riksdag - i.e., it is a strong signal of increased agenda-setting effects.
We also searched for references to a variety of terms used to describe the sorts of actions Restore Wetlands were engaged with: "protest” (protest); "demonstranter” (protester); "miljöaktivister” (environmental activists)"; "klimataktivister” (climate activists). Interestingly there appears little connection to mentions of these terms during the campaign; such terms actually seem to peak before the campaign begins (possibly because Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for Future were both active during this time), as shown in Figure 11.
This gives more weight to the idea that it was wetlands themselves - that is, the message of the campaign - that contributed to the increased level of discussion, rather than the methods and tactics of the campaign. Given the strong feelings against the tactics of the campaign, it is perhaps surprising the degree to which politicians, just as we saw with citizens in the previous section, delineated those feelings from feelings about the campaign’s message.
Figure 11. Riksdag mentions of four protest terms (see key above) in the period 2018-2025.
Policy effects
It is of course extremely difficult to ascertain the specific contribution of any one factor to policy change and several MPs recognised this complexity. One expressed it particularly well, saying, regarding policy effects:
“I’m not sure… I think the fact that the issue was so specific made people more aware and it became one of those things, when we were discussing budget for the coming years, it was one of those things that yes this is good, this is one of those things we can do… The positives of implementing such a policy were all round good. But I can’t say that wouldn’t have happened without the group or with different tactics.”
All MPs were asked whether there were any tangible policy changes on wetland restoration during the period that the campaign was active. For a question that should be quite empirical, there were surprisingly contrasting views. Some believed there were some tangible effects; “Wetlands are one of the few things that actually are in the budget from the government,” said one. Another agreed, “More funding. Addressing the legal hurdles. Banning peat extraction. Prioritising those restoration projects that have the largest possible impact on carbon emissions.” Others disagreed. Asked about the effects of the campaign on government policy, one said, “None that I can identify. Wetland restoration has been a priority in Swedish environmental policy for a long time, with support from a broad political majority.”
The influence of any kind of protest on government policy is clearly at least partially dependent on the political make up of the government. The 2022 Swedish elections saw a marked shift to the right, with the right-wing bloc (the Moderate Party (Moderaterna), Christian Democrats (Kristdemokraterna), Liberals (Liberalerna), and the far-right Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna)) securing a narrow majority. Though a minority, the inclusion of the Sweden Democrats brought consistent challenges to any environmental and social justice policies and there were widespread cuts to budgets in these areas.
One MP, asked whether there was any ‘new money’ for wetlands, clarified the government’s position, “Actually it has not really been new money but they have rebranded other money, they have actually cut down but taken from other things - and remade them as wetlands money. So less money overall than three years ago, but the money that is there is mainly for wetlands.” Prompted about whether she meant this money had come from other climate and environmental projects, she said “Yes. We had 23bn [Swedish Krona], now it’s 17bn. So they say they rebrand things, they reduced the money and changed the names of things and we still see that a big chunk is wetlands…”
Although not a positive overall outcome, this still allows the possibility that the Restore Wetlands campaign affected policy; if cuts were made across the board, with wetlands being relatively spared, this might have been due to the many demonstrable effects of the campaign already discussed. While Restore Wetlands might not have contributed to lots of new money being spent and emission cuts, they arguably limited the damage.
If we return to our original heuristic (figure 2 above), this raises a difficult question about how to judge the ultimate impact of the campaign - that is, the impact on improved environmental quality. What we can say, regarding policy, is that the campaign had positive impacts on all the factors over which it had more control. If, as in figure 2, policy is influenced by policy maker attention, public opinion, media coverage, pressure from the sector, and from voters, we have shown the substantial positive impact of the campaign on all of those factors. When it comes to the complexity of how policy is actually brought into being, that is perhaps beyond the control of outsider activist groups to determine.
Conclusion
Restore Wetlands (Återställ Våtmarker) was a bold and unconventional Swedish climate activism campaign. Leveraging high-profile, disruptive tactics, the campaign elevated the previously niche environmental issue of wetland restoration to national prominence. Despite widespread public disapproval of their tactics, Restore Wetlands achieved several tangible outcomes which validate their claim of success, while also illustrating the trade-offs inherent in these sorts of civil disobedience actions.
Their primary success lies in significantly amplifying the visibility of wetland degradation. Media mentions of wetlands tripled between 2022 and 2023, with sustained peaks corresponding to waves of activist actions. Politically, wetlands became a more salient topic in parliamentary discourse, and were prioritised in government budget allocations, although some funds were repurposed rather than newly introduced.
While the campaign’s tactics sparked polarisation and discomfort, particularly later on in the campaign, the broader environmental sector acknowledged that the attention garnered was unprecedented and largely beneficial. Interviews suggest that the campaign’s focused messaging simplified complex ecological issues, making them more accessible to the public and politically actionable, albeit at some cost of nuance.
Figure 12. Our original heuristic (Figure 2) revisited, showing outcomes of different pathways.
Our assessment suggests that the campaign’s greatest victory was agenda-setting rather than clear overhaul of policy, or the introduction of new policy measures. Even within a resistant political landscape, the campaign demonstrated the power of strategic civil disobedience to disrupt inertia and make a little known issue the subject of everyday discourse, both in the public and political spheres.
Key Impacts:
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Increased public awareness: Name recognition increased to 61% within months; 75% of Swedes became supportive of wetland restoration.
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Media amplification: Media mentions increased by ~88% when protests happened.
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Parliamentary discourse shift: Mentions of wetlands doubled in the Riksdag during the campaign period.
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Sectoral ripple effects: Environmental NGOs leveraged heightened public interest to advance related initiatives.
Restore Wetlands showed how strategic, disruptive activism can be simultaneously very unpopular and very successful in reframing public discourse and pressurising political institutions.
Endnotes
2: Their sentiment analysis uses a combination of natural language processing, machine learning, and deep learning to analyse and rate each article for positive, negative or neutral reporting valence.
3: These data are drawn from our three-country study of the effect of disruptive climate protests on voting intentions 2022- 2024 (Ostarek et al., 2025)
4: For both keywords, we fitted a Bayesian binomial model assessing whether and to what extent the likelihood of the keywords being mentioned differed in each phase (Year 1, Year 2, post-campaign) from the pre-campaign baseline. We placed weakly informative normal priors on all parameters and fit the models in Stan via the brms package in R, drawing 10 000 posterior samples across four chains. We report posterior median odds-ratios and 95% credible intervals for each phase, quantifying how much more (or less) likely a mention was during that period compared to the pre-campaign years.
About Social Change Lab
Social Change Lab conducts empirical research on disruptive protest and people-powered movements. Through research reports, workshops, and trainings, we provide actionable insights to help movements and funders be more effective. You can find all of our research projects and resources on our website. You can contact us at info@socialchangelab.org
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Appendix
Campaign timeline
2022
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2nd January Co-founders Alfred and Helen start to build the campaign
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8th March Letter sent to the government with demands
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28th March First two week action wave, including first highway blockade
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23rd May-11th June Second action wave - 3 weeks
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16th August Disruption of Allsång på Skansen TV show
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17th Aug - 4th Sept Third action wave - road blocks in collaboration with XR
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30th September Trial of 12 activists begins, disruption continues, press release
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21st October Verdict in Solna district court, press release
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25th November Disruption of the finale of swedish TV show “idol”
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18th December Results from SIFO (Swedish Institute for Public Opinion Research) show that 75% of people think it's important to restore wetlands
2023
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26th Feb Disruption of Loreen's performance in Melodifestivalen press release
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17th April Changed from highway blockade to slow walks (as JSO) 4 week duration, easier to mobilise press release
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17th April Disruption in riksdag chamber
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17th April Swedish politician Gudrun Schyman joins slow walk in Stockholm
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18th April Disruption in Riksdag chamber press release
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24th April Slow march arrests press release
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27th May Let’s Dance final disrupted press release
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14th June Actions on Monet painting at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.
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24th July 16 people detained after plugging ditches on a peat mine
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June and 29th July Three weeks of disruptive actions in the peat mines
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12th September Highway blocked 14 people aged 20-79 press release
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19th September Highway blocked by Stockholm university press release
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23rd September End of action wave. Blockade of “Centralbron” in Stockholm.
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22nd October Highway in Bohuslän collapses due to landslide, activists enters the area and climbs billboard with Restore Wetlands banners
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26th October 5 people freed from sabotage charges from highway blockade
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26th November Slow walk in Stockholm
2024
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6th January Slow walk in Stockholm
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15th January Interviewed in studio for Swedish television
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1st February Action against Swedish bank SEB
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7th Feb Last Generation and Restore Wetlands announce EU election run Press release
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2nd April To launch the Återställ Kollektivtrafiken campaign people climb highway gantry with banners
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2nd April - 26 April Återställ kollektivtrafiken (restore public transportation” campaign. Slow walks every Saturday throughout April and subway actions
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12th April Freed from sabotage charges
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22nd April Declaration of victory press release
Questions for MPs
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What was your attitude to the Återställ Våtmarker / Restore Wetlands protests at the time the group were actively protesting about wetlands (2022-2024)?
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What do you consider to have been the main effect of their campaign?
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What were the effects of the protests on government policy?
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What were the effects of the protests on political discourse and parliamentary debate?
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What is your party’s policy on wetland restoration?
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What (additional) tangible policy do you foresee regarding the restoration of wetlands?
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To what extent does the issue of wetland restoration have cross party support?
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To what extent do you attribute any increased political interest in wetlands to the actions of Återställ Våtmarker?
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What do you think the effects of the protests were on public opinion?
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What do you think the effects of the protests were on public and media discourse (that is, the extent to which wetlands were a commonly discussed topic)?
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Do you think the protests had indirect positive effects - for example, in raising the salience of wetland restoration, such that others working in the area might benefit?
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Do you think most people distinguish between the methods of the protesters and their message? (that is, can they disagree with disruption but support the cause of wetland restoration)
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Do you think there were negative effects of the protests? If so, what?
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Do you think the protests had indirect negative effects - for example on tougher policing and sentencing?
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Did the Återställ Våtmarker campaign affect your work? How?
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Is there anything else you would like to add?
Questions for other interviewees
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Please introduce yourself and the organisation you work for
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What was your attitude to the Återställ Våtmarker / Restore Wetlands protests at the time the group were actively protesting about wetlands (2022-2024)?
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What do you consider to have been the main effect of their campaign?
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What do you think the effects of the protests were on government policy?
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Do you think the protests had indirect positive effects - for example, in raising the issue of the wetlands up the agenda in a way that might help others working in the area?
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What do you think the effects of the protests were on public opinion?
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What do you think the effects of the protests were on public and media discourse (that is, the extent to which wetlands were a commonly discussed topic)?
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What were the effects of the protest on other NGOs working in related areas?
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Do you think there were negative effects of the protests?
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Do you think the protests had indirect negative effects - for example on tougher policing and sentencing?
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Did the protests affect your work? How?
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Is there anything else you would like to add?
Media mentions analysis
To assess statistically whether protest events were associated with increased media coverage of wetlands, we fitted a Bayesian negative binomial time-series model using the brms package in R. The model regressed daily media mention counts (in the years 2022–2024) of the term ‘våtmarker’ (wetlands) on an indicator variable (Affected), which marked all days on which a protest occurred (according to the ACLED database), as well as the six following days. This seven-day window was chosen to capture the expectation that coverage is not limited to the day of a protest but that there also tend to be delayed media responses and follow-up commentary (as we and others have found in previous work).
We adjusted for typical temporal patterns and confounders by including:
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Day-of-week fixed effects to account for differences between weekdays (e.g., lower coverage on weekends)
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A thin-plate spline term over time as a smooth function (calculated at the daily level). This allows the model to flexibly capture non-linear, long-term fluctuations—such as seasonal cycles, shifting public attention, or slow-moving structural changes—without imposing rigid assumptions about their shape. The spline effectively adjusts for endogenous variation in media mentions across the study period, improving the isolation of protest-specific effects
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A first-order autoregressive structure (AR(1)) to accommodate serial correlation in the residuals, common in time series data.
The model used a negative binomial likelihood to account for over-dispersion in the count variable, and weakly informative priors were applied to all parameters. All analyses were conducted using four MCMC chains with 10,000 iterations. The primary coefficient of interest was the posterior distribution of the Affected variable, interpreted on the incident-rate ratio (IRR) scale. This captures the multiplicative change in expected daily media mentions during protest-affected days relative to baseline days, holding all other factors constant. Posterior predictive checks confirmed that the model provided a good fit to the data, capturing both central tendencies and temporal variation in the observed series.
Parliamentary mentions
Overview of Data and Coding
To examine shifts in political discourse related to wetlands, we analyzed all video-archived public sessions of the Swedish Parliament (Riksdag) recorded under the Web TV category from March 2018 to March 2025. These include plenary debates, committee hearings, interpellation sessions, and press conferences, providing a comprehensive view of real-time verbal references by Members of Parliament (MPs).
We extracted annual counts of Riksdag events that mentioned either:
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The general keyword “våtmarker” (“wetlands”), or
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The campaign-specific phrase “återställ våtmarker” (“restore wetlands”).
Events were grouped into seven 12-month periods beginning in March each year. Each period was manually assigned to one of four broader campaign phases:
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Pre-campaign: 2018/19 to 2021/22
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Campaign Year 1: 2022/23
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Campaign Year 2: 2023/24
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Post-campaign: 2024/25
The total number of Web TV-archived Riksdag events was conservatively estimated at 800 per year, based on public scheduling data.
Model Specification
We used Bayesian binomial regression to model the likelihood of a given session including a mention of a key term (i.e., “wetlands” or “restore wetlands”), using brms in R. Each model took the form: brm(hits | trials(total) ~ phase, ...).
Where:
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hits = number of events containing the keyword per year
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total = total number of archived Riksdag events per year
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phase = categorical variable (baseline, campaign year 1, campaign year 2, post-campaign)
The model estimated odds-ratios for each campaign phase relative to the pre-campaign baseline (2018/19–2021/22). Models were run using default MCMC settings with 4 chains, each with 10,000 iterations, using weakly informative priors: normal(0, 3) on coefficients (log-odds scale), and normal(0, 5) on intercepts. All models converged well (Rhat ≈ 1.00), with no divergent transitions or sampling pathologies.
Interpretation of Results
The estimated odds-ratios and 95% credible intervals were summarized using the tidybayes and gt packages. Odds-ratios >1 indicate an increased probability of keyword mention relative to baseline. We report posterior medians and intervals for each phase and term.