Critical Thinking for Sustainable Community Decision-Making

The document is a guide from the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) that provides a community leadership tool designed to improve decision-making for sustainable community development. It introduces a decision-making matrix that allows leaders to evaluate proposed actions against 15 systemic factors, comparing them with 'no-action' or alternative scenarios to identify long-term implications and quality-of-life effects beyond simple financial or technical data.

• The tool is designed to help community leaders identify aspects of a decision that are frequently overlooked, specifically those influencing "quality-of-life", moving beyond the "financial and technical information normally considered in community decisions".
• For the tool to be effective, it requires the participation of a diverse group, including people with "different political points of view" and "differing technical backgrounds". The process must be led by an impartial, skilled facilitator and held on "neutral “turf,’ not in a location identified with one point of view".
• The decision-making matrix does not provide a "numerical score". Instead, it uses a system of seven symbols—ranging from highly positive (++) to highly negative (--) and including neutral (0), need information (?), and not applicable (n/a)—to display the positive and negative aspects of proposed actions.
• The matrix evaluates actions based on 15 factors, including Long-Term Effects, Off-site Effects, Cumulative Effects, Self-Reliance, Economic Diversity, Environmental Diversity, Growth, Throughput, Fairness, Public Services, Finances, Natural Resources, Waste, and Multiple Benefits.

APA

RMI (2000). Critical Thinking for Sustainable Community Decision-Making. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_ER00-30_CriticalThink.pdf

Chicago

RMI. Critical Thinking for Sustainable Community Decision-Making. 2000. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_ER00-30_CriticalThink.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Critical Thinking for Sustainable Community Decision-Making |date=2000 |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_ER00-30_CriticalThink.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2000critical, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Critical Thinking for Sustainable Community Decision-Making}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2000}, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_ER00-30_CriticalThink.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }