Sustainable consulting firms, whether they be large like MBB or the Big 4 or small like boutiques, base their advisory practices on the environmental regulations of the local jurisdiction they operate. Hence, advancing sustainability in the private sector is a matter of first initiating policy changes in the public sector, to which the law has significant leverage.
Region by Region
One of the most apparent ways to notice the value of environmental law in corporate action is through cross-comparison across regions.
For instance, Europe is currently witnessing a boom in the advent of new clean legislation, and companies are correspondingly rushing to invest more in complying with local regulations and in hiring consulting services to guide them in doing so.1 These trends have manifested in both the at-large EU and even in peripheral bordering regions like the UK and Eastern European countries where there is a lot of overlap in the business done by MNCs, and these are pushed forward by a continued focus on progressivism through EU directives such as the Sustainability Finance Disclosure Regulation(SFDR) that shift private sector funding in the direction of net-zero carbon emissions.2
East Asia also continues to remain strong in their environmentalist sentiments. At the forefront of this movement is, not surprisingly, Singapore, which has had a long political history of focusing on green policy to protect the tropical, low-lying nation from increasing global temperatures and sea level rise. One new development, being spearheaded by Michelle Tan as the vice president of environmental sustainability for Singapore’s Economic Development Board, is the reinvigoration of carbon markets, given the unmissable opportunity of carbon sinks in the dense rainforests of the region of Southeast Asia, and resultantly over 100 carbon service firms have now set up shop in the economic entrepot of the Region.3
Contrarily, the United States has generally seen a slump in environmental legislation due to the current administration’s desire to return to fossil fuel reliance and promote libertarian business policies. The current government in Washington has considered repealing the 2009 Endangerment Finding from the EPA, which would result in a continued increase in greenhouse gases despite the continued and growing risk of natural climate-related disasters from wildfires in Southern California to hurricanes in south east.4
Public-Private Connection
It is clear that corporations, when left to their own devices, will generally not pursue sustainability initiatives since it works against their profit margins.
Hence, as previously mentioned, the public sector must be the vehicle to drive change in the private sector. How this occurs, though, varies depending on the leanings of the current administration in each nation.
When it comes to the field of consulting, it is truly a sector tied to governmental reform, because consultants are to companies what policy experts are to the government. Likewise, consultants metaphorically bridge the gap between sustainability in the public and private sectors with the help of environmental law.
When environmental lawyers, whether they be deeply institutionalized in government and corporate or based in grassroots bottom-up advocacy, push for stricter regulation, there is a clearly measurable effect on the level of growth in the consulting industry. Optimistic predictions on the trajectory of sustainable legislation suggest, for instance, that despite environmental consulting being a previously niche field and only growing 2% between 2016 and 2021, the industry could witness a 10% increase in size in the year 2026 alone.5
The Future
The final step involves actually creating action, revolving around a question of how lawyers can drive change in government that will then have the downstream effect of
growing the sustainable consulting industry that responds to tightening the regulations.
As noted above, a vital component to having measurable and relatively rapid growth in this arena is to ensure legal advocacy in all realms of a society’s institutions, from local to federal governments and
grassroots organizations that espouse rhetoric for the common people to the most institutionalized members that work within the framework of the current system.
Going back to the role of geography, it is also a matter of understanding the local legal system. Environmental legal advocates in the United States will face very different challenges than those operating in the European Union simply due to the differing functional characteristics of each region’s courts, with the former being more majoritarian while the latter involves more pluralism, given the diverse number of countries united under the supranational organization.
Once these legal changes are successfully enacted and sustainable consulting begins to grow in all regions regardless of political sentiment, it is a cycle of positive feedback in which an environmentally conscious society nurtures sustainable consulting, but also where that cause-and-effect chain is reinforced in the opposite direction, as societal practices begin to adapt around the advice a more robust sustainable consulting industry provides.
Conclusion
Like all matters in sustainability, the question of how environmental law can promote the entire industry of sustainable consulting proves to be one
of heavy overlap between different systems, symbiosis, and the reinforcement of various forces. These three steps, legal advocacy, policy change, and consulting growth, constitute the crux of the matter regarding
what defines a truly sustainable society, and following this framework will be the way countries across the world can bridge the gap to become green and low-carbon.
References
Image: Meepian, N. (n.d.). Business Consultant Is Checking Analysis Sales Figures to Plan Business Strategies. Vecteezy.
https://www.vecteezy.com/photo/8570806-business-consultants-is-checking-and-analysis-sales-figures-to-plan-business-strategies.
[1] Balch, O. (2025, February 27). Wave of Regulation Drives Demand for Sustainability Advice. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/3bc008ff-cf3d-4bd7-8052-e1beeabca002.
[2] European Commission. (n.d.). Sustainability-Related Disclosure in the Financial Services Sector. https://finance.ec.europa.eu/sustainable-finance/disclosures/sustainability-related-disclosure-financial-services-sector_en.
[3] Lopes, M. (2024, November 12). Michelle Tan. TIME.https://time.com/7172429/michelle-tan.
[4] Lubber, M. (2025, August 12). How a retreat by the EPA would endanger the U.S. economy. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/how-retreat-by-epa-would-endanger-us-economy-2025-08-12/.
[5]Anderson, K. (2025, June 21). Why is Environmental Consulting Booming? Greenly. https://greenly.earth/en-us/blog/company-guide/why-is-environmental-consulting-booming.