Sustainable Livelihoods hasSbecome a hotspot research field of global environment change and it is also becoming one of the important research paradigms of sustainability science. Taking the web of science as our data source, applying the information visualization software CiteSpaceSⅢ, adopting Keywordslike “co-linear analysis”, “document co-citation”, “burst term analysis” etc., we systematically analyzed the current status of the international sustainable livelihoods research. The results show that the quantity of the international sustainable livelihoods research documents are on the rising trend and mostly specializes in the subject of ecology, environment, resources and management or other related topics. The research institutions of Wageningen UR, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Copenhagen, UniversitySof Queensland, and University of Leeds show stronger research strengths of sustainable livelihoods. But the cooperation between researchers and research institutions are decentralized and a sizable cooperation network has not yet been formed. Scholars like Scoones I, Chambers R, Conway G, Ellis F and Ostrom E etc. and their representative works laid a solid foundation in the establishment of the theoretical elementary knowledge and other related researches. The interrelation between livelihoods and ecological environments is the major focus, and the comprehensive integration of interdisciplinary is going to become the new trend of the international sustainable livelihoods research.