Rural development issues are critical not only for the rural areas themselves but also for addressing pressing global concerns of food security (FS), climate change, biodiversity conservation, poverty reduction, provision of environmental goods and services, and good governance. Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has been a rural development strategy for over 30 years. This paper has a two-fold objective: to assess the CBNRM experience in order to improve the performance of CBNRM itself, and to evaluate the lessons learned from CBNRM for critical issues – especially food security and climate change. Featured June, 2013.