Achieving environmentally sustainable transport is one of the major challenges that OECD countries are facing. To this end, a new policy approach is needed which places environmental criteria up front along with other policy goals. Recognising this need, the OECD initiated in 1994 an international project to define and chart a path towards Environmentally Sustainable Transport (EST).

The overall objectives of the EST project were to provide an understanding of EST its implications and requirements, and to develop methods and guidelines towards its realisation. The core of the EST approach was to develop long-term scenarios and identify instruments and strategies capable of achieving it by using a backcasting methodology.

In 1998, Environment Ministers of OECD countries requested the OECD to develop guidelines for moving towards EST. In response to this request, the OECD has developed a set of key guidelines which operationalise the 1996 Vancouver Principles towards Sustainable Transportation and the strategic directions. The Ministers endorsed the EST Guidelines in May 2001.

The EST project attempts to demonstrate what strategies to achieve EST might look like, as well as their economic and social impacts, considering long-term environmental issues. It is an attempt to establish a basis for a diverse range of policy-makers and economic actors to communicate and a framework for government to set goals, objectives, targets or standards and initiate actions.

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