This article introduces sustainable livelihoods approaches, explaining what they are and how they have emerged. It examines how different organizations have taken up a sustainable livelihoods approach, and considers whether in so doing they have drawn on community development thinking and practice. It is found that community development is largely absent from sustainable livelihoods thinking and contended that part of the reason lies with the locally situated character of community development practice, which makes it difficult for externally driven sustainable livelihoods interventions to systematically incorporate community‐level methods and practices. More fundamentally, sustainable livelihoods approaches embody a technocratic development drive, which is at odds with the principles, ethos and values that underpin much community development work.