This edited collection provides a comprehensive overview of the dynamics of contemporary natural resource based livelihoods and implications for their sustainability in the context of the Kalahari environment of southern Africa, a region subject to marked spatial and temporal natural variability. Each chapter is written by an active Kalahari researcher and addresses, from an environmental or a social perspective, the implications of different policies for rural livelihoods and coping strategies. In each chapter one or more of the key tenets of environment, policy and structural land use change provides the central element around which the sustainable livelihoods theme is considered. Although the focus of the book is the Kalahari, introductory and concluding chapters, in turn, contextualise the research and discuss key enviro-development issues which resonate across the individual chapters with relevance for wider global debates.