Click here for Living With the Future in Mind: Goals and Indicators for New Jersey’s Quality of Life 3rd Edition, 2004.
The core of the Institute’s mission is to develop goals, indicators and targets of sustainable development for New Jersey. The first report “Living With the Future in Mind: Goals and Indicators for New Jersey’s Quality of Life” was issued in 1999. The report was updated in 2000 and again in 2004.
Goals are broad vision statements that describe where we want to be, and where we think we need to be, in the future. Indicators are time series data on real world trends that describe where we are, and where we are headed, in relation to the goals. The Sustainable State Goals and Indicators provide New Jersey citizens with the critical information they need to understand where we are, and where we are heading.
The goals and indicators were created in a broad stakeholder process led by New Jersey Future, in partnership with the State of New Jersey and a coalition of non-profit organizations and business leaders. That process resulted in eleven goals and forty-one indicators that track progress on economic, social and environmental issues. The Institute is now working to facilitate the establishment of targets for these indicators, and to encourage key institutions to agree on the steps they will take to help achieve them.
Previous Indicator Reports
The NJSSI indicators were first published in 1999 by New Jersey Future, which initiated the Sustainable State Project. The second edition was published in 2000 by a state interagency working group coordinated by the Department of Environmental Protection. This was followed by Governing with the Future in Mind, which described how state agencies could further sustainability through their work.