This briefing explores how biodiversity can be the basis of viable economic opportunities that benefit the previously disadvantaged in rural areas. The relevance of a biodiversity economy for local government is to place it squarely in the context of the two core challenges of sustainability: the fight against poverty and exclusion, and a growing environmental crisis. In South Africa, these two challenges coalesce in a particularly unique way. South Africa is distinct in that its world-renowned biodiversity, which is under significant threat, coexists with a history of land dispossession that produced widespread rural poverty. A strategy to address both issues is now being pursued in the Western Cape and parts of the Eastern and Northern Cape, holding new opportunities as well as challenges for rural municipalities around the country in supporting local economic development (LED).