I'd like to preface this post by noting that my knowledge of the environmental consulting business is relatively poor. Thus, I shall keep my thoughts extremely general. The first general problem that I've always had with the process of hiring an environmental consultant was the fact that the developer, etc. is the one that does the hiring. Environmental assessments are required by law, to ensure that the damage a proposed project would have is not too severe. Obviously, from the point of view of the developer the consultant's job is to give the project the green light, determining that the environmental damage would not be so great as to preclude the development of the project. In other words, the burden of proof is on the developer, which is all great and consistent with the Precautionary Principle.
However, problems often arise due to the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, environmental consulting firms are privatized. There is good old capitalist competition between different consulting firms, and this often gets in the way of scientific integrity. After all, how do we determine how much environmental damage is acceptable? Setting the bar higher is an obvious goal for environmentalists, as it reduces development to more marginal areas while protecting a greater amount of land. But that's not what the developer's want. They want it to be
easier to develop in the most convenient locations regardless of the environmental impact, all the while negotiating the least amount of red tape. So if there's a specific consulting firm that's known for setting the bar a little lower, developer's are going to want to hire them. Disproportionately more than competing firms. That is, until other firms start to lower the bar just to prevent themselves from being run out of business. Free market competition is antithetical to the ultimate goals of the environmental laws that require consulting firms to be hired. But it's a balancing act, because clearly having successful firms with
some standards (albeit standards that lean toward favoring developers) is better than letting developers run rampant, unchecked. After all, the most damaging projects won't be approved because any consulting firm that approves it will have its reputation completely tarnished, and will likely be harassed by environmental groups until their forced out of business. After all, developers won't want to hire a firm that gets such negative press, either.
It logically follows that projects near the border will be skewed in favor of development, because you can make an argument that the benefits outweigh the costs while still sounding reasonable. Thus, your reputation as an environmental firm isn't tarnished, but the developers that hire you can still appreciate your pro-development slant (even if the slant only exists to stay in business, not necessarily representing the personal convictions of the employees). I worry that this pattern results in the bar being discretely and incrementally set lower, especially in the face of a growing population and more land use "requirements."
My solution would be to remove environmental consulting from the free market and give it some sort of government oversight. I recognize that this could also be problematic, as large firms interested in development hold a lot of political influence. However, it's still better than having the developers hire consultants directly, in part because politicians - who need to be re-elected - are subject to more public scrutiny than private businessmen (after all, it's a free, capitalist country, and if you've built a business up you can't get voted out). Essentially, a developer would pay a mandatory consulting fee, probably commensurate with the scale of the project. Government consultants would then be sent to do the assessments. Employees from the disbanded private consulting firms could be hired as government workers, and the funding would come from the consulting fees. Without competition between firms, there would be no incentive to compromise scientific integrity, thus ensuring more objective assessments.
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