Many peatlands have considerable value in supporting local communities for subsistence. Human cultures can be substantially dependent on the productivity and/or the ecological and hydrological functions and values of peatlands. These include for example, the reindeer herding cultures of nomadic tribes that almost fully depend on Arctic and sub-arctic peatland landscapes, central Asian nomads whose livestock mostly depends on pastures on peat soils, small-scale subsistence farming communities in the peaty páramos of the high Andes, and the nomadic yak herding cultures on the Tibetan plateau.

Peatlands are often poverty traps. Whereas peatlands are valuable in many respects, they can also be poverty traps for local people. Many indigenous people in peatlands are living in isolation from the modern economic mainstream. While there is value in the traditional lifestyle, it may also come with hardships, in terms of lack of access to schooling, medical facilities and many other services and facilities that modern society regards as synonymous with wealth and/or development. Nevertheless, attempts to push these communities into modern life often creates more poverty and may be more related to interests in the natural resource base than in the livelihoods and development of these people.

Indigenous communities that depend on wild peatlands are most vulnerable to peatland degradation. Peatlands include some of the last remaining wilderness and vast natural resource areas of the world, with huge undisturbed stretches in the sub-arctic zone. Development in such areas often ignores the special hydrological and ecological characteristics that are central to the productivity of these peatland areas.

While developments may bring economic prosperity to some stakeholders, the poorer and marginalized local people who subsist on the natural productivity of peatlands are often excluded from the planning and development process and it is they who suffer most from the negative environmental impacts. For these communities, the degradation and loss of their peatlands is tantamount to losing their way of life. Currently, the potential for subsistence livelihoods is decreasing in many peatlands due to increasing population pressure as well as externally-induced development. Under such circumstances, local communities may find no other solution than to over-exploit what is left of the natural resource base.

Peatlands still play a key role in modern economies. Peatlands still play a key role in the economy in many first world countries. The economic value of peat as a substrate for modern horticulture in countries like the Netherlands and Germany is huge. This is one of the reasons why large areas of peatlands in western and central Europe remain a target of peat mining (Aerts 2005). In countries in economic transition, such as Russia and eastern European countries, the demand for agricultural products is decreasing, making traditional agriculture and grazing on peatlands no longer economically viable. This leads to large-scale abandonment of drained or extracted peatlands, with farmers and companies unable or unwilling to pay for restoration.