The global sustainable development agenda supports equitable development that ensures sustainable use of the natural resource base and improves livelihoods. SARD and World Bank embrace the idea that agriculture is the engine that will drive economic growth and that the existence of technologies and legal frameworks as well as social and institutional capacity will propel this development. This paper reviews success factors for achieving sustainable development, highlighting both internal and external factors that are needed to enable improved livelihoods and environmental management in the rural sector. Many of the internal success factors revolve around being better able to do and control a number of aspects of rural development – the so-called “empowerment factor”. External factors support the community and include enabling policy and institutional environments, market economies, availability of information and advisory organizations, good governance, good and accountable management, and existence of platforms for discussion and exchange. Many of these elements have been brought into the integrated natural resource management (INRM) research approach. Following an overview of the Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD) paradigm and a synthesis of key success factors for SARD, the paper reviews approaches, strategies and methods in NRM research. The paper then consolidates the INRM research approach based that has emerged from diverse NRM approaches and is built on SARD principles. The paper concludes by distilling five key factors enabling sustainable development and natural resource management, and their implications for research challenges and needs