To prevent irreversible damage to the environment, OECD governments need to change many of their existing policies. OECD supports its member countries by identifying the necessary policies, providing quantitative projections of changes in the environment, assessing environmental policies, and agreeing practical strategies and common principles to tackle environmental problems.

OECD released a pioneering Environmental Outlook in 2001, providing economy-based projections of environmental pressures and conditions to 2020. The report identifies policy packages to address the most pressing concerns and analyses their potential effects and costs. OECD is continuing to develop single-issue outlooks for environmental pressures or issues not addressed in the 2001 report.

To address the environmental concerns they face, OECD Environment Ministers adopted an OECD Environmental Strategy for the First Decade of the 21st Century in May 2001. The Strategy outlines five key objectives for environmental sustainability, identifies the actions OECD countries need to take to realise these objectives, indicators for measuring their progress, and future work of the OECD.

OECD also works to enhance the conceptual basis of, and ensure strategic coherence amongst, existing policy principles, guidelines and criteria for environmental sustainability. This includes ongoing assessment of the use of the Polluter Pays Principle (first adopted by the OECD in 1972), including through Environmental Performance Reviews, as well as work on the "precautionary approach".

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