Setting PKG_CONFIG_PATH doesn't seem like a good option for me. You would need to implement the path for every possible distribution and platform to not cause any regressions. On Arch Linux it is for example /usr/lib32/pkgconfig. On FreeBSD it is /usr/libdata/pkgconfig/. Not to speak of cross compilation cases in which users might have a special build of pkgconfig where overriding PKG_CONFIG_PATH doesn't make any sense.
Regards, Michael