The briefing paper is based on the findings of the first year of the Community Conservation Resilience Initiative, which has facilitated participatory assessments of the resilience of community conservation by more than 30 communities in 10 countries. They show that in practice, biodiversity can be mainstreamed at the local level through rights-based approaches that benefit both nature and peoples’ livelihoods. The briefing paper also highlights threats such as large-scale industrial fishing operations that undermine coastal community livelihoods, commercial monoculture plantations that replace diverse forests and undercut forest peoples’ livelihoods and ‘Green Revolution’ agricultural practices that negatively impact traditional agricultural systems.