Daniel C. Esty is an American environmental lawyer, policymaker, academic, and corporate sustainability adviser. He is the Hillhouse Professor at Yale University with primary appointments in the Yale Law School and the Yale School of the Environment, and secondary appointments at Yale's Jackson School of Global Affairs and the Yale School of Management. He also serves as Director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and Co‑Director of the Yale Initiative on Sustainable Finance
Esty is known for his research and writing related to environmental law and policy, corporate sustainability, global governance, climate change, sustainability metrics, and trade law reform. He co-leads the Remaking Trade Project, a global network of policymakers and scholars working to reconfigure the international trade system reconfigured to better align with the 21ˢᵗ Century sustainability imperative. With a team of researchers at Yale and Columbia, Esty created the Environmental Performance Index.