If you keep up with the news long enough, I think two things will become clear to you. First off, the outlook for the environment is bleak. During the last few years, the sense of crisis is reinforced almost daily, following reports of wildfires, floods, collapsed ecosystems, extinct species and scarcity of food and water from all over the world.

Secondly, the debate surrounding climate change and how to handle it is never-ending. Partly because everything we do stems back to the planet we live on, but also because people seem unable to agree on what direction the climate is really heading in. We have people, politicians and others, arguing about whether or not we are actually experiencing a climate crisis in the first place. While often portrayed as a frontrunner, even Sweden, a country where trust in institutions is generally high, where climate awareness is strong and where sustainability is taken seriously, struggles with deciding what and how much we should do for the Swedish environment.

For small countries like Sweden, it is easy to point to the fact that there are others who are worse than us. This argument might be effective on the global stage, but how well do we actually take care of the environment, here at home? How well has the country done at protecting, and later at restoring, different parts of our nature?

Wetlands

Though many conservation efforts are slow and lack dramatic headlines, the opposite must be said for wetland restoration in Sweden. During the 19th and 20th centuries, large areas of wetland were drained through state-supported policies. Since the 90s, the consequences of these policies have been well documented, but some time passed before real action was taken.

During the late 2010s and onward, something changed, and wetland restoration grabbed an increasingly larger part of the public debate. In large part, this was the result of campaigns from groups like Återställ Våtmarker, famous for using civil disobedience in media-visible actions. While their tactics are still controversial, they turned the destruction of wetlands into a symbol of delayed climate action and government responsibility followed. In 2018, a wetland initiative was introduced and it increased funding for a while, though it was sharply cut in 2023.

Forests

Formally, Swedish forest policy has aimed to balance production and environmental objectives since the Forestry Act of 1993, but when this was deemed insufficient, public debates intensified. There has been a push for stronger regulations, and critics argue the Swedish government has relied too much on voluntary measures and certification schemes rather than actual restoration requirements. The result is uneven progress: selective restoration in some areas, continued intensive harvesting in others. Forest outcomes are determined less by lack of knowledge than by political reluctance to regulate a powerful sector.

Oceans

Over recent decades, Sweden has expanded the protection of marine areas. However, protection often remained symbolic and failed to bring real change. Harmful activities were still permitted, and rules were unevenly enforced. That gap became harder to defend as people, along with researchers and NGOs, pushed the issue onto the political agenda. Since then, management of protected waters has tightened – strengthening restrictions, clarifying what “protected” actually means, and moving closer to real enforcement.

Energy

Since the methods used for energy production are a deciding factor in determining the possibility and success of restoration efforts, the two remain intersected. Reducing emissions as well as the use of fossil energy is a precondition for allowing ecosystems to recover.

In many cases, environmental initiatives focus on better access to nature or better protection of animal life. Climate compensation, however, is another key factor. Since all life is dependent on carbon, allowing ecosystems to flourish is a way of storing it.

As pressure on the government and others has grown, the response has generally been new policies and tightening of climate targets, with the latest being from 2017 aiming for zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. Throughout the last decade, green energy expanded rapidly, becoming one of Sweden’s largest sources of new electricity. By the 2020s, fossil free energy production methods accounted for the vast majority of Sweden’s electricity production.

As the production of energy becomes cleaner, our emissions decrease and the “offset logic” where protection and conservation efforts are treated primarily as carbon compensation for fossil emissions disappears. When the need to compensate for other environmental impact lessens, the focus shifts to building ecosystems that are resilient, biodiverse and work as long-term sustainable carbon storage, rather than them having to act as emergency balancing tools.

What Is Happening

The progress during the last decades has been real – but it seems it may have also slowed down. The strongest momentum came when pressure on those in charge peaked.

This article is no declaration of triumph. Wetlands are still being drained at the same pace at which they are being restored. Forest management continues to prioritise short-term wins over ecological recovery. Marine ecosystems remain under pressure despite new protections. Lastly, multiple sources, like Klimatpolitiska rådet, Naturvårdsverket and Riksrevisionen, state that without changes to policy and energy production, we will be unable to reach the goal of net zero emissions by 2045.

Judging by the history of restoration in Sweden, one thing seems clear to me: the changes that are so desperately needed do not happen on their own, and those in charge are not always keen to prioritize them.