STAR Sustainability Goals and Guiding Principles

The STAR Community Index Sustainability Goals and Guiding Principles represents a milestone in the national movement to create more sustainable, livable communities. The Goals set a new national standard, and serve as an invaluable resource for local governments.

Why Communities Need Defined Goals—and STAR

For too long, community sustainability has been a nebulous concept with competing definitions and frameworks. There has never been a national standard by which to measure sustainability performance (e.g., economic prosperity, health and safety, climate protection, etc.) at the municipal or county scale. Establishing these Goals and Guiding Principles is the first giant step toward addressing this critical need, and giving local governments the tools to accelerate their efforts and achieve greater success.

This milestone is the product of thousands of volunteer hours, and the engagement of more than 160 sustainability experts and stakeholders from broad disciplines using a collaborative and consensus-based process, drawn from government, the nonprofit and private sectors, and academia.

How to Use the Goals

The STAR Sustainability Goals and Guiding Principles are an invaluable resource for local governments and community stakeholders working to:

• create or revise a sustainability plan
• conduct a sustainability assessment
• establish local sustainability priorities
• focus ongoing sustainability initiatives

You can use the goals document as a framework in combination with ICLEI’s Five Milestones for Sustainability. By aligning your local priorities with STAR’s framework now, your community will be primed to utilize the full STAR performance management system when it is released in early 2012.