This Legal Brief reviews the concept of sustainability and systems thinking in legislative efforts, as well as relevant guiding principles. It then reviews a number of legal tools and mechanisms, namely impact assessments, planning instruments, establishing appropriate stakeholder participation bodies, clearly defining (and safeguarding) rights of access to a resource while conserving the resource base, protecting labour rights, benefit sharing, offering fiscal incentives for prescribed management practices or the use of prescribed technologies and materials, establishing certification schemes that attest to sustainable production, extraction or harvesting, designating areas for specific uses and objectives (e.g. protected areas) and in situ and ex situ conservation of genetic resources.