Introduction
The regulation of health, safety, and the environment at work has never been a purely technical matter. It sits at the intersection of political economy, legal tradition, scientific knowledge, and institutional capacity. A chemical exposure limit in a European Union directive, an inspection protocol in a United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) field manual, a pollution permit condition in China, and a work health and safety duty in an Australian statute all reflect distinct histories of labour struggle, environmental mobilisation, administrative state-building, and, increasingly, economic strategy. To speak of “health and safety and environmental regulation across jurisdictions” is therefore to speak of a family of regimes that share common aspirations—the prevention of harm to workers, communities, and ecosystems—but which pursue those aspirations through markedly different architectures, enforcement cultures, and legal technologies.
The past several years have been a period of unusual turbulence for these regimes. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of occupational health and safety (OSH) systems and accelerated debates about psychosocial risks, remote work, and the boundaries of employer responsibility. The intensification of the climate crisis has pushed environmental regulation from the periphery of corporate governance toward its centre, with mandatory climate disclosure, supply chain due diligence, and carbon border measures emerging as central instruments of public policy. At the same time, a powerful counter-movement has taken shape. In the United States, federal agencies have retreated from enforcement and from climate-related rule making, devolving significant regulatory energy to states.
In the European Union, the “Omnibus” simplification package has reduced the scope of flagship sustainability directives by dramatic margins, prompting accusations of backtracking on human rights and environmental protection. The result is a global regulatory landscape characterised less by convergence toward a single model than by a complex interplay of harmonisation and divergence, ambition and retrenchment, innovation and inertia.
This article examines that landscape across the principal industrialised and industrialising jurisdictions. It begins with occupational health and safety, comparing the foundational architectures of the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, China, India, and selected other systems. It then turns to environmental regulation, tracing the shift from command-and-control permitting toward market mechanisms, disclosure, and supply chain governance, while noting the unevenness of that shift. Finally, it identifies the cross-cutting trends that are reshaping health, safety, and environmental regulation globally—mandatory climate disclosure, due diligence, the integration of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations with traditional environmental, health, and safety (EHS) functions, digitisation and artificial intelligence, the rise of psychosocial risk, and the politics of regulatory retreat—before concluding with the implications for multinational enterprises and for the future of regulatory governance itself.
Part I: The Architecture of Occupational Health and Safety Regulation
The United States: The General Duty and the Turn Toward Voluntarism
The foundation of federal occupational safety and health law in the United States remains the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, a statute born of the great wave of social regulation of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Act created OSHA within the Department of Labour and established a dual structure of regulation: a set of specific standards promulgated under the Act, codified principally in Title 29 of the Code of Federal Regulations, and a broad “General Duty Clause” requiring employers to furnish a workplace “free from recognised hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm”. The Act covers most private-sector employers and, through federally approved state plans, many public-sector workers as well.
The American model has traditionally been characterised as enforcement-oriented and compliance-based. OSHA sets permissible exposure limits (PELs) for hazardous substances, issues detailed standards for particular industries and hazards, and relies on inspections, citations, and monetary penalties to secure adherence. Penalties are adjusted annually for inflation; by 2026, serious violations carried a maximum of approximately USD 16,131, while wilful or repeat violations could attract penalties exceeding USD 161,000, with criminal referral available for wilful violations causing an employee’s death. In practice, however, the reach of federal enforcement is limited by resources: OSHA has long had fewer inspectors than would be required to inspect every covered workplace with any frequency, a constraint that has shaped the agency’s reliance on voluntary programmes and targeted national emphasis programmes (NEPs).
The most significant development in recent American OSH policy has been the explicit shift away from enforcement-based compliance toward what the agency describes as proactive risk management and prevention. In early 2026, OSHA launched its “Safety Champions Program,” a voluntary, self-guided initiative designed to help employers of any size develop workplace safety and health programmes. The agency described the programme as representing a shift in emphasis, and it followed a December 2025 issuance of seven letters of interpretation addressing confined spaces, hazard communication, and related requirements.
This approach has not gone uncontested. Critics have pointed to the simultaneous weakening of the heat illness National Emphasis Program, which had been renewed in January 2025 but was subsequently amended away from enforcement metrics toward voluntary compliance. The practical consequence is a federal regime that retains a robust statutory framework and a General Duty Clause of broad potential application, but which increasingly relies on persuasion, partnership, and employer self-assessment rather than on the deterrent effect of frequent inspection and substantial penalty.
This federal retreat has been accompanied by a pronounced state-level counter-movement. California has moved forward with its own climate disclosure regime, while Colorado and New Jersey have proposed bills requiring Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions reporting. Several states have advanced heat-illness prevention standards that outpace federal OSHA efforts. For employers operating across the United States, the result is not a single OSH regime but a fragmented compliance environment in which the applicable standard may depend as much on the state of operation as on the federal statute. This fragmentation is a recurring feature of American regulation, but it has become particularly salient in the current period of federal deregulatory energy.
The European Union: Prevention, Participation, and the Framework Directive
The European Union’s approach to occupational health and safety rests on a different foundation. The cornerstone is Council Directive 89/391/EEC of 1989, the OSH Framework Directive, which established the principle that employers must take appropriate preventive measures to make work safer and healthier, provide information and training to workers, and consult with workers and their representatives on matters of health and safety. The Framework Directive does not seek to harmonise every detail of national law; rather, it sets minimum requirements that Member States must transpose into their own legal orders, leaving room for more protective national provisions. This “minimum harmonisation” model has allowed the EU to accommodate diverse industrial relations traditions—from the corporatism systems of Germany and the Netherlands to the more centralised systems of France and southern Europe—while maintaining a common floor of protection.
The EU regime is often characterised as preventive and engineering-oriented, in contrast to the compliance-oriented American model. The Framework Directive requires employers to carry out a risk assessment as the starting point of OSH management, to eliminate risks at source, to adapt work to the individual, and to give priority to collective protective measures over individual protective equipment. This hierarchy of controls is a distinctive feature of European OSH law, reflecting a philosophical commitment to primary prevention rather than reliance on personal protective equipment or behavioural compliance. The EU also requires the appointment of competent health and safety services, the provision of health surveillance where risks warrant it, and the meaningful participation of workers in the design and implementation of preventive measures.
The EU’s substantive standards are updated through a stream of “daughter directives” addressing particular hazards and sectors. The Carcinogens, Mutagens and Reprotoxic Substances Directive has been revised repeatedly since its first adoption in 2004 and now addresses twenty-eight cancer-causing substances. In December 2025, the Council agreed its position on a sixth revision, which would introduce new or revised occupational exposure limits for a range of substances, including isoprene, with the expectation that the revised rules would prevent around 1,700 cases of lung cancer and 19,000 other illnesses over four decades. The directive was formally adopted in October 2026, with Member States given two years to transpose it into national law. Separate directives address asbestos, lead, noise, vibration, and the use of work equipment, among other hazards. The EU has also adopted legislation on the protection of pregnant workers, young workers, and workers on fixed-term or temporary agency contracts, reflecting a broader commitment to equality and to the protection of vulnerable groups.
Enforcement in the EU is a matter for Member States, and the styles and intensities of enforcement vary considerably. Some countries, such as Denmark and the Netherlands, have experimented with risk-based inspection targeting and with reduced monitoring for employers that participate in partnership or voluntary programmes, shifting scrutiny onto non-participating employers. Others, such as Germany, have developed elaborate systems of statutory accident insurance and prevention services that integrate inspection with rehabilitation and compensation. The common thread is not a single enforcement model but a shared legal framework that makes risk assessment, worker participation, and prevention obligatory across the Union.
The United Kingdom: The Health and Safety at Work Act and the Post-Brexit Trajectory
The United Kingdom’s Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 is a landmark of OSH law, and its influence has extended far beyond the UK’s borders. The Act established a general duty on employers to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety, and welfare of their employees and of others affected by their undertaking. The concept of “reasonably practicable” has been central to the UK regime: it requires employers to weigh the risk against the sacrifice, whether in money, time, or trouble, involved in averting it, and it has allowed the law to adapt to changing circumstances without constant legislative amendment. The Act also created the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) as the principal regulator and established a tripartite structure, involving government, employers, and workers, in the governance of health and safety.
The UK’s departure from the European Union has set in motion a process of divergence that is still unfolding. The HSE has taken on new responsibilities for chemicals regulation through UK REACH, building safety, and dangerous goods, but it has done so with substantially reduced resources. Between 2010 and 2020, the HSE’s organisation-wide budget fell by £122 million, or 43 percent, and by 2025 it employed nearly 3,000 staff and 900 inspectors, well below the more than 4,000 staff and 1,500 inspectors it had in the 2000s. The HSE has also lost access to the European Chemicals Agency’s database, the world’s most comprehensive chemical registration system, a loss that has been compounded by its diminished capacity to respond to new hazard classifications issued in the EU. The statutory obligation on the HSE to respond to all substances given hazard classifications in the EU within a legal time frame has been removed, raising concerns about the transparency and pace of future divergence.
The divergence is not merely a matter of resources, it is also a matter of regulatory philosophy. The UK government has introduced a “growth duty” on the HSE, requiring it to have regard to economic growth in the exercise of its functions, a development that critics argue compromises the regulator’s independence and its ability to prioritise health and environmental risks over economic considerations. The government has also signalled a preference for aligning with the United Nations’ Globally Harmonised System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals rather than with the EU’s new hazard classes, a choice that the European Commission has stated is not reciprocated on the EU side. The practical effect is a gradual, perhaps accelerating, divergence between Great Britain and the EU in the classification and regulation of chemicals, with implications for trade, for the free movement of goods, and for the level of protection afforded to workers and the public.
Northern Ireland presents a special case. Under the Windsor Framework, Northern Ireland remains aligned with many EU rules, including those on chemicals and product safety, while Great Britain diverges. This creates a regulatory border within the United Kingdom, adding complexity for businesses that operate across the Irish Sea and raising questions about the long-term coherence of the UK’s internal market in regulated products.
Australia: Model Laws and the Persistent Challenge of Harmonisation
Australia’s approach to work health and safety (WHS) has been shaped by a distinctive federal structure and by a long-running effort to achieve national harmonisation. In 2008, the National Review into Model Occupational Health and Safety Laws recommended a set of model WHS laws to be adopted by the Commonwealth, states, and territories. The model WHS Act and Regulations were developed through Safe Work Australia, a national policy body that brings together representatives of the Commonwealth, states, and territories, as well as worker and employer interests. The model laws are based on a general duties framework, supplemented by specific obligations for particular hazards and industries, and they incorporate a hierarchy of controls and a requirement for consultation with workers.
The harmonisation project has achieved substantial but incomplete success. The model WHS laws have been adopted by the Commonwealth, all states, and both territories except Victoria, which maintains its own Occupational Health and Safety Act. Western Australia adopted the model laws through its Work Health and Safety Act 2020, which became operative in March 2022. Yet the persistence of jurisdictional variations has been a source of ongoing concern in the country.
A 2025–2026 best practice review of the model WHS laws, conducted by Safe Work Australia, found stakeholder dissatisfaction with the increasing disharmony between state and territory laws fifteen years after the model laws were introduced. The review’s discussion paper catalogued variations in the WHS duties framework, consultation and representation requirements, right of entry, compliance and enforcement, inspector powers, legal proceedings, offences and penalties, and codes of practice. It also identified a broader challenge: some jurisdictions regulate particular industries separately or outside their WHS frameworks, leading to a patchwork of safety regulation that can be difficult for multi-state employers to navigate.
The Australian experience illustrates a more general tension in federal systems: the desire for national consistency and the reality of regional political and administrative autonomy. The model laws have raised the floor of protection in some jurisdictions and have created a common vocabulary of duties and obligations, but they have not eliminated the differences that matter to employers and workers. The review process itself is an acknowledgement that harmonisation is not a one-off legislative event but a continuing project of maintenance and adjustment.
China: The Work Safety Responsibility System and the Party-State
China’s work safety regime has undergone a profound transformation over the past two decades, driven by a series of high-profile industrial disasters and by the leadership’s determination to project an image of effective governance. The basic law is the Work Safety Law of the People’s Republic of China, originally promulgated in 2002 and most recently amended in 2021. The law establishes an “all-staff work safety responsibility system,” requiring production and business entities to establish and improve rules and regulations, increase investment in work safety, provide education and training to workers, and provide protective equipment that meets national or industry standards. A distinctive feature of the Chinese approach is the “dual prevention mechanism” of graded safety risk management and control and hidden danger identification and rectification, which requires enterprises to identify and classify risks and to rectify hazards on a systematic basis.
The scope of Chinese work safety regulation has been expanding. In December 2025, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress promulgated the Hazardous Chemicals Safety Law, which came into effect on 1 May 2026 and imposes a comprehensive responsibility system on entities engaged in the production, storage, use, operation, or transportation of hazardous chemicals. The law requires such entities to meet prescribed safety conditions and to implement an all-employee responsibility system. This builds on a pre-existing architecture of registration, licensing, and safe-use permits for hazardous chemicals, which had been developed through a series of administrative measures issued by the State Administration of Work Safety.
Enforcement in China is intimately connected to the broader apparatus of Party-state governance. Work safety performance is integrated into the evaluation of local officials, and serious accidents can trigger administrative accountability, including the dismissal or prosecution of responsible officials. The use of social credit systems is also extending into the environmental and safety domains, with environmental credit ratings, differentiated regulatory treatment, and credit repair mechanisms being deployed to incentivise compliance. The Chinese model is thus not simply a system of rules and inspections; it is a system of political and administrative incentives in which work safety and environmental performance are treated as indicators of governmental competence and legitimacy.
India: Consolidation, Codes, and the Challenge of Implementation
India’s OSH landscape is in the midst of a significant transition. For decades, the principal statute was the Factories Act of 1948, supplemented by a maze of state-level rules and sector-specific legislation. The Factories Act prescribed measures relating to working conditions, hazard prevention, safety of machinery, ventilation, waste disposal, and the protection of workers, and it led to the creation of rules for hazardous waste handling, biomedical waste management, and chemical safety. Over time, however, the Act came to be seen as outdated and fragmented, and its coverage was limited to manufacturing establishments above a certain size threshold.
The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (OSH) Code, 2020, represents an attempt to consolidate and modernise this framework. The Code was brought into force on 21 November 2025, and it extends certain obligations under the Factories Act to establishments employing at least ten workers, including information technology and other service-sector establishments. It introduces new duties on employers, including ensuring that the workplace is free from hazards likely to cause injury or occupational disease, complying with OSH standards, providing free annual health examinations for specified classes of employees, ensuring safe disposal of hazardous and toxic waste including e-waste, and issuing letters of appointment to every employee. Employees gain the right to obtain information from the employer relating to their health and safety at work and to make representations about inadequate protection, with escalation to an Inspector-cum-Facilitator. Penalties for non-compliance have been increased, with a maximum fine of INR 500,000 for certain contraventions.
The implementation of the OSH Code has been uneven across India’s states and union territories. By late 2025, eighteen to twenty-five states had already incorporated many provisions of the labour codes into their own rules, and Gujarat had formalised the OSH Code in June 2025, awaiting the central government’s final nod to initiate implementation. Karnataka had enforced the Factories (Safety Audit) Rules, 2024, and other states such as Kerala and Andhra Pradesh had taken steps toward implementation. Bihar repealed its Shops and Establishments Act in light of the overlapping provisions in the OSH Code, a sign of the consolidating logic of the new framework. Yet significant gaps remain: several states, including West Bengal, Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Sikkim, had not completed harmonisation, and enforcement capacity at the state level remained a persistent concern. The Indian experience illustrates a broader challenge facing many emerging economies: the gap between legislative ambition and administrative reality, between the enactment of modern standards and the creation of the inspectorates, training systems, and technical expertise needed to give them effect.
Other Jurisdictions: Japan, Brazil, and South Africa
A comparative account of OSH regulation would be incomplete without attention to jurisdictions that have developed distinctive approaches outside the Anglo-American and European traditions. Japan’s Industrial Safety and Health Act, originally enacted in 1972, was amended in 2025 to address the needs of a diverse and ageing workforce. The amendments, which take effect in stages from 2025 through 2026, promote safety and health measures for solo self-employed workers, strengthen mental health measures in the workplace, improve the prevention of health disorders caused by chemical substances, and promote measures to prevent occupational accidents among older workers. The Japanese approach is notable for its integration of mental health into the statutory OSH framework and for its recognition that the boundaries of the employer’s responsibility are shifting as the nature of work changes.
Brazil’s regulatory framework for OSH is centred on the Consolidation of Labour Laws (CLT) and on a extensive body of regulatory standards (Normas Regulamentadoras) issued by the Ministry of Labour and Employment. These standards address everything from the use of personal protective equipment to the prevention of accidents in confined spaces, and they are enforced through a system of labour inspectors and prosecutors. Brazil’s environmental licensing system, by contrast, has been the subject of intense controversy. In 2025, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate approved a General Environmental Licensing Bill that United Nations human rights experts warned would introduce “significant regressions” to Brazil’s environmental licensing system and threaten the rights to life, health, and a clean environment. President Lula da Silva subsequently vetoed sixty-three articles of the bill, a decision welcomed by the UN experts, but the episode illustrates the political disagreement of environmental regulation in a country with immense natural resources and powerful agricultural and industrial interests.
South Africa’s OSH regime is based on the Occupational Health and Safety Act of 1993, which imposes a general duty on employers to provide a safe and healthy working environment. The Act is supplemented by regulations on hazardous substances, noise, vibration, and other specific hazards. Environmental regulation is governed principally by the National Environmental Management Act of 1998 (NEMA), which imposes a general duty of care to prevent pollution and ecological degradation and requires environmental authorisation for listed activities. The two regimes overlap in important respects: both address the management of the environment to prevent hazards or risks to human health, and the mining sector, in particular, is subject to both OSH and environmental legislation.
In 2025, South Africa amended its OSH regulations to consolidate obligations previously contained in the Environmental Regulations for Workplaces, and it introduced new provisions on space, safety, and first-aid duties tied to explicit criminal penalties for non-compliance. The South African experience highlights the importance of regulatory integration: OSH and environmental regulation are not separate domains but overlapping systems of risk governance that must be coordinated if they are to be effective.
Part II: Environmental Regulation — From Permits to Markets to Disclosure
The United States: Deregulation, Federalism, and the Retreat from Climate Disclosure
The United States environmental regulatory system is built on a series of foundational statutes enacted in the 1970s: the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (Superfund), among others. These statutes established a system of federal standard-setting, permitting, and enforcement, administered principally by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and by state environmental agencies operating under federal delegation. The American model has traditionally been characterised by a combination of technology-based standards, health-based standards, and market-based mechanisms such as the acid rain trading programme established under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments.
The current period, however, has been marked by a pronounced deregulatory turn at the federal level. In March 2025, the EPA announced what it described as the “biggest deregulatory action in US history,” with potential implications for greenhouse gas reporting, particulate standards, and air toxics rules. The agency proposed to repeal Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program obligations for forty-six of forty-seven source categories and to suspend the remaining subpart. Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed to rescind the climate-disclosure rules adopted in 2024 but never brought into effect, with the SEC Chair characterising the rules as a “serious overreach” of the agency’s authority. The EPA under Administrator Lee Zeldin has focused on weakening or eliminating regulations perceived as climate-friendly. The combined effect is a federal environmental policy that is retreating from climate-related regulation and from the expansion of disclosure obligations, even as the scientific case for action strengthens.
As with OSH, the retreat at the federal level has been accompanied by state-level activism. California’s climate disclosure regime, comprising Senate Bill 253 (Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions reporting for entities with revenue over USD 1 billion) and Senate Bill 261 (climate-related financial risk disclosure for entities with revenue over USD 500 million), is now in force, with Scope 1 and 2 disclosures required in 2026. Colorado and New Jersey have proposed similar Scope 1, 2, and 3 reporting requirements, and several states are advancing heat-illness prevention standards that exceed federal requirements. The result is a fragmented environmental regulatory landscape in which the stringency of regulation depends heavily on the jurisdiction, and in which multinational firms must navigate a patchwork of federal, state, and local requirements.
The American experience thus illustrates a broader theme: in federal systems, the retreat of the central state does not necessarily mean the retreat of regulation altogether; it may instead mean its relocation to sub national jurisdictions with different political priorities.
The European Union: The Green Deal, the Omnibus, and the Politics of Simplification
The European Union has positioned itself as the global leader in environmental regulation through its European Green Deal, a comprehensive strategy adopted in 2019 with the goal of making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. The Green Deal has generated an extensive legislative programme, including the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), the EU Taxonomy Regulation, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED), the Batteries Regulation, the Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), and the Forced Labour Regulation. Together, these instruments represent an ambitious attempt to harness corporate governance, financial markets, and international trade in the service of environmental and social objectives.
The CSRD requires companies listed on an EU regulated market, as well as other large companies meeting specified thresholds, to report on sustainability matters in accordance with European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). The reporting obligations cover environmental matters, social matters and treatment of employees, respect for human rights, anti-corruption and bribery, and diversity on company boards, and they include a requirement to report Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions. The CSDDD goes further, requiring in-scope companies to conduct human rights and environmental due diligence across their value chains, identifying, preventing, mitigating, and accounting for adverse impacts. The EU Taxonomy provides a classification system for environmentally sustainable economic activities, intended to guide investment and to prevent green washing. The CBAM, which entered its transitional phase in 2023, imposes a carbon price on imports of certain carbon-intensive goods, aiming to prevent carbon leakage and to encourage decarbonisation in third countries. The Deforestation Regulation requires operators and traders to prove that relevant commodities and products placed on the EU market are deforestation-free and legally produced.
This ambitious programme, however, has encountered significant political resistance. In 2025, the European Commission presented its “Omnibus” simplification package, ostensibly to reduce administrative burdens on companies and to improve the coherence of the regulatory framework. The effect of the package, as approved by the European Parliament and Council, has been dramatic. The scope of the CSRD has been reduced by nearly 90 percent, and the scope of the CSDDD by 70 percent, leaving only a small fraction of the companies originally intended to be covered. The Omnibus agreement also deleted the requirement for companies to adopt climate transition plans under the CSDDD and reduced the depth of value chain assessment required, shifting from a comprehensive assessment of all suppliers to a focus on key risks and a more targeted approach to information requests from smaller partners. The EU Deforestation Regulation was delayed by one year, with large and medium-sized companies required to comply by 30 December 2025. The “Stop-the-Clock” Directive delayed reporting obligations by two years for wave 2 and wave 3 companies under the CSRD.
The Omnibus has been fiercely contested. Green and civil society groups, as well as some businesses, have argued that the backtracking puts environmental and human health at risk and undermines the EU’s credibility as a global leader. The European Economic and Social Committee has stressed that simplification measures should not bring about any direct or indirect impacts on the health and safety of workers, and it has called for greater harmonisation of reporting methodologies and interoperability of digital systems. The Omnibus thus encapsulates a central tension in contemporary environmental regulation: the tension between the ambition to regulate for long-term sustainability and the political pressure to reduce short-term compliance costs, particularly in a context of economic stagnation, geopolitical competition, and rising energy prices.
The United Kingdom: Divergence, Chemicals, and the Capacity Gap
The UK’s post-Brexit environmental regulatory trajectory has been shaped by two competing imperatives. On the one hand, the government has sought to demonstrate a commitment to environmental protection, legislating for net zero by 2050 and establishing the Office for Environmental Protection as a watchdog. On the other hand, it has pursued a deregulatory agenda in the name of growth and competitiveness, and it has struggled to replicate the institutional capacity that the UK previously derived from its membership of the EU.
The chemicals sector is the clearest illustration of the divergence. As noted above, the HSE, which serves as the regulator for UK REACH, has lost access to the European Chemicals Agency’s database and has seen its resources decline substantially. The UK government has reduced the fees that industry pays to the HSE for registering substances and applying for authorisations, a move that may ease costs for business but that also reduces the regulator’s revenue at a time when its capacity is already stretched. The statutory link with the EU has been removed, meaning that the HSE is no longer obliged to respond to all new EU hazard classifications within a legal time frame, and it will not need to explain any exclusions from the UK’s mandatory classification and labelling list. Divergence between the UK and the EU in mandatory hazard classifications has so far been minimal, but the institutional framework is now in place for divergence to accelerate, and the loss of data access and regulatory capacity raises questions about the UK’s ability to maintain standards independently.
The divergence extends beyond chemicals. The UK’s approach to environmental permitting, waste regulation, and air quality has evolved in ways that reflect domestic political priorities rather than EU obligations, and the absence of the EU’s infringement procedures and Court of Justice oversight means that the enforcement of environmental law depends more heavily on domestic judicial review and on the Office for Environmental Protection. The UK’s experience illustrates a broader point about the relationship between regulatory autonomy and regulatory capacity: the ability to diverge is not the same as the capacity to regulate well, and the loss of shared institutions and data infrastructure can impose substantial costs on both regulators and regulated entities.
Australia: EPBC Reform and the Quest for National Environmental Standards
Australia’s principal environmental statute is the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act), which establishes a federal approval process for actions that are likely to have a significant impact on matters of national environmental significance, such as World Heritage properties, Ramsar wetlands, threatened species and ecological communities, and migratory species. The EPBC Act has long been criticised for its complexity, delays, and lack of a coherent national standards framework, and a series of reviews—including a major independent review in 2020—recommended fundamental reform.
In 2025, the federal parliament passed a suite of EPBC Act reforms that represent the most significant overhaul of Australian environmental law in more than two decades. The key elements include the introduction of legally enforceable National Environmental Standards to guide decision-making and provide a consistent framework for assessing projects; the establishment of an independent National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) on 1 July 2026, responsible for compliance, enforcement, and oversight; reforms to Commonwealth-State bilateral agreements to ensure that accredited assessment and approval processes operate consistently with the National Environmental Standards; enhanced compliance and enforcement powers, including increased penalties for serious breaches, expanded investigative and audit powers, and new environment protection orders; the consolidation of three existing assessment pathways into a single streamlined framework, with expedited pathways for eligible projects; the introduction of bio regional plans to identify areas suitable for development and conservation; and the establishment of Environment Information Australia as an independent body responsible for collecting, managing, and reporting environmental data.
These reforms seek to reconcile two objectives that are often in tension: the desire for stronger environmental protection and the desire for faster, more certain approvals for economically significant projects. The introduction of National Environmental Standards is intended to provide a clear and consistent benchmark against which projects can be assessed, reducing the scope for ad hoc decision-making. The establishment of NEPA as an independent regulator is intended to strengthen enforcement and to depoliticise compliance. The retention of bilateral agreements with the states, however, means that the federal government will continue to rely on state-level assessment processes, and the effectiveness of the reforms will depend on the extent to which the National Environmental Standards are actually applied and enforced across jurisdictions. The Queensland Productivity Commission has been directed to conduct a public inquiry into the reforms, with a final report due by April 2027, a sign of the continuing disagreement over the balance between environmental protection and economic development.
China: Pollution Permits, Carbon Markets, and the Marketisation of Environmental Governance
China’s environmental regulatory system has evolved from a command-and-control model centred on emissions standards and administrative penalties toward a more hybrid system that incorporates market-based mechanisms, disclosure, and credit-based incentives. The Environmental Protection Law, revised in 2014 and effective from 1 January 2015, established the principle that governments at all levels must take effective measures to prevent and control pollution and public nuisances, and it introduced a system of pollution discharge permits, environmental impact assessment, and public interest litigation. The law also strengthened penalties for environmental violations, including the possibility of daily fines and the detention of responsible persons.
A distinctive feature of the Chinese approach is the use of five-year plans and central policy documents to set environmental targets and to coordinate action across ministries and levels of government. In May 2025, the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the State Council issued an opinion on improving the market-based allocation of resource and environmental factors, with the goal of establishing a basically complete carbon emissions trading system, a water rights trading system, and a pollution rights trading system by 2027. The opinion calls for more active trading markets, better price formation mechanisms, and more efficient allocation of resource and environmental factors, reflecting a strategic shift toward using market instruments to achieve environmental objectives. China’s national carbon market, which initially covered the power sector, is being expanded to include more industries, and the government is developing a system of environmental credit evaluation that will be used to differentiate regulatory treatment and to incentivise compliance.
The Chinese model is not without its tensions. The reliance on market mechanisms and credit systems coexists with a political system in which local officials are evaluated on both economic growth and environmental performance, and the balance between these objectives can shift over time. The central government’s commitment to environmental protection is articulated forcefully in policy documents, but implementation at the local level can be uneven, particularly in regions that are heavily dependent on carbon-intensive industries. Nevertheless, the direction of travel is clear: China is building a more sophisticated and diversified environmental regulatory system, one that combines traditional administrative controls with market instruments, information disclosure, and credit-based incentives.
India: Environmental Impact Assessment, Judicial Intervention, and the Struggle for Regulatory Coherence
India’s environmental regulatory framework rests on the Environment (Protection) Act of 1986, which provides the legal basis for a wide range of rules and notifications on air and water pollution, hazardous waste, biomedical waste, e-waste, plastic waste, and environmental impact assessment. The EIA Notification of 2006 requires certain categories of projects to obtain prior environmental clearance before construction, and it establishes a process of screening, scoping, public consultation, and appraisal. Projects are classified as Category A (appraised at the central level) or Category B (appraised at the state level), depending on their potential environmental impacts.
The Indian environmental regulatory system has been shaped to an unusual degree by judicial intervention. In February 2025, the Supreme Court stayed a notification that had exempted certain categories of projects from the requirements of the EIA Notification, and in May 2025, in the case of Vanashakti v Union of India, the Court struck down a 2017 notification and a 2021 standard operating procedure, holding that the EIA Notification of 2006 is intended to protect the environment and prevent pollution and that exemptions cannot be granted without adequate justification. The Court’s interventions reflect a broader pattern of judicial activism in Indian environmental law, in which the courts have often acted as a check on executive discretion and as a forum for public interest litigation. At the same time, the executive has continued to propose amendments to the EIA regime, including a 2025 draft notification to exempt Common Effluent Treatment Plants and Common Municipal Solid Waste Management Facilities from prior environmental clearance, and the Environment Audit Rules 2025, which create a cadre of certified third-party environmental auditors to undertake on-site verification and audit of projects.
The Indian experience illustrates the importance of institutional checks and balances in environmental regulation. The EIA process is not merely a technical exercise; it is a site of disagreement among developers, regulators, affected communities, and the judiciary. The Supreme Court’s willingness to strike down exemptions has reinforced the legal standing of environmental protection, but it has also highlighted the fragility of regulatory standards when they depend on executive discretion. The challenge for India is to build a system of environmental governance that is both efficient and accountable, and that can withstand the pressures of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation.
Brazil and South Africa: Licensing, Rights, and the Politics of Environmental Protection
Brazil’s environmental licensing system has been one of the most contested areas of environmental policy in Latin America. The country’s licensing regime, which originated in the 1980s and was consolidated by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1981 and subsequent regulations, requires environmental impact assessment and licensing for projects with significant environmental impacts. The system has been criticised by industry for being slow and unpredictable, and by environmentalists for being insufficiently protective. In 2025, the Brazilian Congress approved a General Environmental Licensing Bill that UN human rights experts warned would introduce significant regressions, including the expansion of exemptions and self-licensing, and would threaten the rights to life, health, an adequate standard of living, and a clean environment. President Lula da Silva vetoed sixty-three articles of the bill, a decision that the UN experts welcomed, but the episode demonstrates the intense political disagreement surrounding environmental regulation in a country with a large agricultural sector, extensive mineral resources, and a globally significant portion of the Amazon rain forest. Brazil’s Supreme Court has also been involved in adjudicating the constitutionality of the licensing law, and the outcome of that litigation will shape the future of environmental governance in the country.
South Africa’s environmental regulatory framework is anchored in NEMA, which establishes a general duty of care and a set of principles for environmental management, including sustainable development, the precautionary principle, and the polluter-pays principle. NEMA requires environmental authorisation for listed activities and provides for a range of compliance and enforcement mechanisms. The OSH Act and NEMA overlap in their concern for human health and environmental protection, and the mining sector is subject to a separate regime under the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act. In 2025, South Africa amended its OSH regulations to consolidate environmental health obligations and to introduce new provisions on space, safety, and first aid, with explicit criminal penalties for non-compliance. The South African experience underscores the importance of regulatory integration across OSH and environmental domains, and it illustrates the challenges that developing economies face in building enforcement capacity and in balancing environmental protection with economic development.
Part III: The Convergence Agenda — Global Trends Reshaping HSE Regulation
Mandatory Climate Disclosure: From Voluntary Frameworks to Binding Law
One of the most significant trends in environmental regulation over the past decade has been the shift from voluntary climate disclosure to mandatory reporting. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), established by the Financial Stability Board in 2015, provided a widely adopted framework for disclosing climate-related risks and opportunities, organised around governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets. The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), created in 2021, has built on the TCFD framework to develop global baseline standards—MFRS S1 and MFRS S2—for sustainability and climate-related disclosure. As of June 2025, thirty-six jurisdictions had adopted or otherwise used the ISSB standards or were in the process of finalising steps toward introducing them.
The adoption of mandatory climate disclosure is uneven but expanding. In the EU, the CSRD requires disclosure in accordance with ESRS, which are aligned with the ISSB standards. In Australia, mandatory climate-related financial disclosures commenced on 1 January 2025, with a phased approach for different categories of entities.
In New Zealand, climate-related disclosures are mandatory for certain large entities, and the government announced changes to the regime in October 2025. In Brazil, the Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CUM) Resolution 193 requires publicly traded companies, securitisation companies, and investment funds to disclose climate-related risks following ISSB standards, with mandatory disclosure beginning on 1 January 2026.
In California, Senate Bills 253 and 261 impose Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions reporting and climate-related financial risk disclosure on large entities doing business in the state. In China, the Ministry of Finance has issued draft Corporate Sustainability Disclosure Standards that largely follow the ISSB, with plans to finalise the standards by 2027 and to phase them in once adopted.
The United States is the notable exception to this trend at the federal level. The SEC’s climate-disclosure rule, adopted in 2024, was stayed and subsequently proposed for rescission, and the EPA has proposed to repeal its greenhouse gas reporting programme for most source categories. The American retreat from federal climate disclosure stands in contrast to the trajectory in most other major economies, and it reinforces the fragmented nature of the US regulatory landscape, where state-level regimes such as California’s continue to impose substantial disclosure obligations.
The trend toward mandatory climate disclosure has several implications. First, it increases the quantity and quality of information available to investors, regulators, and the public, potentially improving market discipline and accountability. Second, it imposes significant compliance costs on companies, particularly those with complex global supply chains, and it requires the development of new systems for data collection, verification, and assurance. Third, it creates pressure for international harmonisation, as companies seek to avoid duplicate reporting requirements across jurisdictions. The ISSB standards are intended to serve as a global baseline, but the EU’s ESRS are more extensive, and the coexistence of multiple frameworks creates the risk of fragmentation even as the broad direction of travel is toward mandatory disclosure.
Supply Chain Due Diligence: Extraterritorial Reach and the Governance of Global Value Chains
A second major trend is the rise of supply chain due diligence legislation, which requires companies to identify, prevent, and mitigate adverse human rights and environmental impacts in their value chains. The EU’s CSDDD is the most ambitious instrument of this kind, but it is part of a broader movement that includes the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (LkSG), the French Duty of Vigilance Law, the Dutch Supply Chain Due Diligence Law, the Norwegian Transparency Act, the Swiss Due Diligence Ordinance, and the UK Modern Slavery Act. The UK government has recently released new statutory guidance on the Modern Slavery Act that significantly raises the bar on what a good modern slavery statement looks like under section 54.
The CSDDD, as originally adopted, would have required in-scope companies to conduct due diligence across their entire value chain, to adopt climate transition plans, and to establish grievance mechanisms for affected stakeholders. The Omnibus amendments have reduced its scope and softened its requirements, but the directive nonetheless represents a significant expansion of corporate accountability. The German LkSG, which applies to companies with at least 3,000 employees (and, from 2024, 1,000 employees), requires companies to establish a risk management system, conduct regular risk analyses, adopt preventive and remedial measures, and report annually to the German federal supervisory authority. The French Duty of Vigilance Law imposes similar obligations on large French companies, and it has been used by NGOs and affected communities to bring lawsuits against companies for alleged failures to prevent human rights and environmental harms.
The extraterritorial reach of these laws is a defining feature. The EU Deforestation Regulation requires exporters to the EU to prove that their products are not linked to deforestation, regardless of where the deforestation occurred. The US Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act prohibits the importation of goods produced wholly or in part in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and it places the burden on importers to demonstrate that their supply chains are free from forced labour. These measures extend the regulatory reach of importing jurisdictions into the production processes of exporting countries, creating a new form of trade-related environmental and social governance. For multinational enterprises, the challenge is to build due diligence systems that can operate across diverse legal, cultural, and institutional contexts, and to ensure that their supply chain governance is robust enough to withstand scrutiny from regulators, investors, civil society, and consumers.
The Integration of ESG and EHS
A third trend is the increasing integration of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations with traditional environmental, health, and safety (EHS) functions. Historically, EHS has been concerned with compliance with OSH and environmental regulations, while ESG has been concerned with the broader sustainability performance of the enterprise and its relationships with investors, communities, and other stakeholders. The two domains have often been managed separately, with EHS reporting to the chief operating officer or the head of manufacturing, and ESG reporting to the chief financial officer or the head of corporate affairs.
This separation is breaking down. The ISSB’s sectoral standards, which are integrated into the MFRS system, include topics such as water management and workforce health and safety, recognising that these issues are material to investors and to long-term value creation. The CSRD’s ESRS include disclosure requirements on working conditions, health and safety, and respect for human rights, alongside environmental matters. The CSDDD requires companies to address both human rights and environmental impacts in their due diligence processes. Regulatory bodies are increasingly working to harmonise standards and improve corporate sustainability transparency, and the scope of ESG and EHS regulations continues to expand across regions and sectors.
The integration of ESG and EHS has practical implications for corporate governance. It requires the development of integrated data systems that can capture health, safety, environmental, and social performance across the value chain. It requires the alignment of risk management frameworks so that OSH and environmental risks are assessed alongside climate, human rights, and governance risks. And it requires a shift in organisational culture, from a compliance-oriented approach to OSH and environment to a more strategic approach that recognises these issues as integral to business resilience and long-term value creation.
Digitisation, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Regulatory Oversight
A fourth trend is the digitisation of regulatory oversight and the emergence of artificial intelligence as a regulated domain in its own right. Regulators are increasingly using digital tools for data collection, risk profiling, and enforcement targeting. The Chinese social credit system, for example, uses environmental and safety compliance data to rate enterprises and to differentiate regulatory treatment. The EU’s CSRD and the ISSB standards require digital, machine-readable reporting, which facilitates the automated analysis of corporate sustainability data. Environmental sensors, satellite monitoring, and remote sensing are being used to detect pollution and deforestation in near-real time, expanding the scope and precision of regulatory oversight.
At the same time, AI is itself becoming a subject of regulation, with significant implications for OSH and EHS. The EU Artificial Intelligence Act, which entered into force in August 2024, introduces a risk-based framework for AI systems, with prohibitions on “unacceptable risk” systems, AI literacy requirements from February 2025, full application of most provisions from August 2026, and an extended deadline for high-risk AI systems embedded in products from August 2027. Employers using AI in workplace decision-making must ensure staff AI literacy and compliance with strict governance rules for high-risk systems. In the United States, without a federal AI law, states are introducing targeted measures: Texas’s Responsible AI Governance Act prohibits discriminatory AI, and California’s Senate Bill 7 would ban reliance on AI for key employment decisions without human oversight and restrict predictive AI use. In Asia-Pacific, Japan has adopted its first AI law, establishing a national AI strategy centre and mandating cooperation with investigations and adherence to national principles, while Hong Kong has expanded its Building Energy Efficiency Ordinance to cover data centres.
The regulation of AI intersects with OSH and EHS in several ways. AI systems used in workplace monitoring, productivity management, and hiring can affect workers’ privacy, autonomy, and mental health, raising psychosocial risk concerns. AI systems used in industrial processes can enhance safety through predictive maintenance and early warning systems, but they can also introduce new risks if they are poorly designed or inadequately governed. The challenge for regulators is to develop frameworks that encourage innovation while ensuring that AI systems are safe, transparent, and accountable, and that they do not undermine the protections that OSH and environmental law are designed to provide.
Psychosocial Risks and the Right to Disconnect
A fifth trend is the growing recognition of psychosocial risks as a legitimate concern of OSH regulation. Psychosocial risks—including work-related stress, bullying, harassment, violence, and the blurring of boundaries between work and private life—have been identified as emerging risks in the EU, and the European Parliament has called on the Commission to propose a directive on psychosocial risks and well-being at work. The EU Framework Directive already covers all occupational risks, including psychological risks, but the implementation reports and the European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER) provide evidence that the existing framework has not been sufficient. The European Economic and Social Committee has urged the Commission to propose a directive that would establish binding obligations to identify psychosocial risks through appropriate risk assessments, with the participation of workers and trade unions.
The right to disconnect is one manifestation of this broader concern. France and Italy have introduced comprehensive legislative frameworks, while other countries, such as Romania and Japan, continue to rely primarily on working-time limits, and Canada is moving towards a mixed federal-provincial model. Australia’s new right to disconnect, effective since August 2024 for larger employers, allows employees to refuse to monitor, read, or respond to work-related communications outside working hours, subject to reasonableness considerations. At the EU level, the Commission launched a consultation in April 2024 on fair remote work and the right to disconnect.
The regulation of psychosocial risks represents a significant expansion of the OSH domain. It moves OSH beyond the traditional concern with physical hazards—chemicals, machinery, noise, and ergonomics—to encompass the organisation of work, the quality of working relationships, and the psychological contract between employer and employee. This expansion poses challenges for regulators, employers, and workers alike. It requires new forms of risk assessment that can capture the subjective experience of work, new forms of worker participation that can give voice to concerns that may be difficult to articulate, and new forms of enforcement that can address organisational failures that may not manifest in immediate physical harm. It also raises questions about the boundaries of employer responsibility, particularly in an era of remote work, digital communication, and fragmented employment relationships.
The Retreat from Regulation and the Politics of Retrenchment
A sixth trend, and one that cuts against the others, is the retreat from regulation in several major jurisdictions. In the United States, the federal government has moved decisively away from enforcement-based OSH regulation and from climate-related environmental regulation, devolving significant regulatory energy to states and to voluntary programmes. In the EU, the Omnibus package has reduced the scope of the CSRD and CSDDD by dramatic margins and has delayed the implementation of key sustainability obligations. In the UK, the HSE’s resources have declined substantially, and the government has introduced a growth duty that critics argue compromises the regulator’s independence. In Brazil, the environmental licensing reform was significantly rolled back by presidential vetoes, but the underlying political pressures for loosening environmental controls remain strong.
The retreat from regulation is driven by several factors. Economic stagnation, rising energy costs, and geopolitical competition have created pressure on governments to reduce regulatory burdens on business. The anti-ESG backlash, particularly in the United States, has politicised sustainability reporting and has made it a target for ideological opposition. The complexity and cost of compliance with overlapping reporting requirements have generated legitimate concerns about administrative burden, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises. And the political cycle in democratic countries creates incentives for governments to prioritise short-term economic growth over long-term environmental and social objectives.
Yet the retreat is not uniform, and it is not uncontested. In the United States, state-level action on climate disclosure and heat-illness prevention has partially offset federal retreat. In the EU, the Omnibus has been criticised by civil society, trade unions, and some businesses, and the European Economic and Social Committee has insisted that simplification must not come at the expense of worker health and safety. In Australia, the EPBC reforms have strengthened environmental standards and created an independent regulator, even as they seek to streamline approvals. In China, the direction of travel remains toward stronger environmental and safety regulation, albeit through a different institutional logic than in liberal democracies. The global picture is therefore one of divergence and disagreement rather than a uniform retreat, with the balance of regulatory ambition depending on the specific jurisdiction, the political complexion of its government, and the strength of its civil society and social partners.
Conclusion: Implications for Multinational Enterprises and the Future of HSE Regulation
The comparative analysis presented in this article reveals a global regulatory landscape that is neither converging toward a single model nor fragmenting into incoherence. It is, rather, a landscape of overlapping regimes, shared principles, and persistent differences. The foundational principles of OSH regulation—the general duty of care, the hierarchy of controls, risk assessment, worker participation, and prevention—are widely shared across jurisdictions, even as they are implemented through different legal instruments and enforced through different institutional arrangements. The foundational principles of environmental regulation—pollution prevention, the polluter-pays principle, precaution, and sustainable development—are similarly widespread, even as the choice of policy instruments varies from command-and-control permitting to market-based trading to disclosure and due diligence.
For multinational enterprises, this landscape presents both challenges and opportunities. The challenges are obvious: regulatory fragmentation increases compliance costs, creates legal risk, and requires sophisticated systems for tracking and responding to developments across multiple jurisdictions. The extraterritorial reach of supply chain due diligence and deforestation regulations means that companies can no longer assume that compliance with local law is sufficient; they must also meet the standards imposed by their major markets. The retreat from regulation in some jurisdictions does not necessarily reduce compliance burdens, because state-level and sub national regulation, as well as investor and consumer expectations, may fill the gap. The rise of mandatory climate disclosure and the integration of ESG and EHS create new reporting obligations and new demands for data, assurance, and governance.
The opportunities are equally significant. Companies that invest in robust HSE management systems, that integrate OSH and environmental considerations into their core business strategy, and that build resilient supply chain due diligence processes are better positioned to manage regulatory risk, to attract investment, and to maintain their social licence to operate. The harmonisation of reporting standards through the ISSB and the development of digital, machine-readable reporting formats create opportunities for efficiency and comparability. The recognition of psychosocial risks and the right to disconnect create opportunities for employers to differentiate themselves as responsible employers in a competitive labour market. And the shift toward market-based environmental instruments, such as carbon trading and environmental credit systems, creates opportunities for companies that are able to innovate and to capture the value of environmental performance.
The future of HSE regulation will be shaped by several forces. The first is the trajectory of the climate crisis, which will continue to drive the development of disclosure requirements, carbon pricing mechanisms, and adaptation obligations. The second is the evolution of work, including remote work, platform work, and automation, which will require regulators to rethink the boundaries of the employment relationship and the scope of OSH protection. The third is the development of artificial intelligence, which will create new risks and new opportunities for regulatory oversight. The fourth is the politics of regulation itself, which will determine whether the current period of retrenchment in some jurisdictions is a temporary pause or a lasting shift in the balance between public protection and private autonomy.
What is clear is that the era of purely national regulation, in which companies could manage compliance jurisdiction by jurisdiction, is over. The most significant regulatory developments of the past decade—the CSRD, the CSDDD, the CBAM, the EUDR, the ISSB standards, and the various supply chain due diligence laws—are all extraterritorial in their reach and global in their ambition. They reflect a recognition that the most pressing health, safety, and environmental challenges are transnational in nature and cannot be addressed through national regulation alone. They also reflect a recognition that the private sector, and particularly large multinational enterprises, have the capacity and the responsibility to contribute to the solution. The challenge for the coming decade will be to build a global regulatory architecture that is coherent enough to be effective, flexible enough to accommodate legitimate jurisdictional differences, and robust enough to withstand the political and economic pressures that will inevitably arise. That is a challenge not only for regulators but for businesses, workers, civil society, and the international community as a whole.
