Assessments of the sustainability of paludiculture should take into account ecosystem services besides carbon sequestration and how paludiculture can be integrated with traditional farming practices. Peatlands can provide a number of other ecosystem services e.g. biodiversity conservation and water regulation. It is therefore important to protect this areas and restore degraded areas. To conserve, restore and improve management of peat lands is a cost efficient and relatively easy way to maintain  ecosystem services. However, these the ecosystem services are not priced in a market and do not produce economic profit for the local communities. The drainage and cultivation, grazing, as well as peat mining on the other hand give the local communities short-term economic profits. It has therefore been argued that conservation and restoration, which has a significant and common value, needs to be subsidized by the state or the world at large.
Paludiculture is not focused on nature conservation but on production, but paludiculture and conservation may complement each other in a number of ways. 1) Paludiculture can be the starting point and an intermediate stage in the process of restoring a drained peatland. 2) Paludiculture can lower the cost of the conservation project by e.g. decrease the costs of biomass removal and establishment costs. 3) Areas with paludiculture practice can provide buffer zones around the conserved peat areas. 4) Areas with paludiculture in between conservation areas can provide corridors facilitating species migration. 5) Paludiculture may increase the acceptance by the affected stakeholder to rewet once drained peatland. The support of the local communities in rewetting project are often crucial.
The effect on greenhouse gas emissions of paludiculture is complex. On the one hand a higher water table will reduce the aerobic decomposition of peat and therefore the carbon dioxide emissions. But on the other hand the increased ground water table may increase anaerobic decomposition of organic matter or methanogenesis and therefore increase the emission of methane (CH), a short-lived but more potent greenhouse gas than CO. The emissions emanating from rewetted peatland with paludiculture will also be affected by the land-use in terms of type of use (agriculture, forestry, grazing etc.), but also in terms of used species and intensity. Traditional use of peatland has often less impact on the environment than industrial use has, but need not be sustainable in the long run and if used at a larger scale.