We can adopt this. Bhutan believes in GNH not GNP. Gross national happiness Not Gross national product. ExtIn July 2011, Bhutan introduced the only resolution it has ever presented at the United Nations. Resolution 65/309 was called Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development. The countrys position was that the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human goal and that the gross domestic product...does not adequately reflect the happiness and well-being of people. The General Assembly passed the resolution unanimously. It was intended as a landmark step towards adoption of a new global sustainability-based economic paradigm for human happiness and well-being of all life forms to replace the current dysfunctional system that is based on the unsustainable premise of limitless growth on a finite planet. That empowered Bhutan to convene a high-level meeting. I was delighted when its leaders asked me to serve on a working group charged with defining happiness and well-being, and developing ways to measure these states and strategies. Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley even cited the David Suzuki Foundations Declaration of Interdependence as an inspiration for the proposal. The Bhutanese understand that well-being and happiness depend on a healthy environment. They vow to protect 60 per cent of forest cover in their country, are already carbon-neutral (they generate electricity from hydro) and have vowed to make their entire agriculture sector organic. They have snow leopards, elephants, rhinos, tigers and valleys of tree-sized rhododendrons — and know their happiness depends on protecting them. At a 1972 international conference in India, a reporter asked Bhutans king about his countrys gross national product — a measure of economic activity. His response was semi-facetious: He said Bhutans priority was not the GNP but GNH - gross national happiness. Bhutans government has since taken the concept of GNH seriously and galvanized thinking around the world with the notion that the economy should serve people, not the other way around. In 2004, Crown Prince Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, who became king in late 2006, said, There cannot be enduring peace, prosperity, equality and brotherhood in this world if our aims are so separate and divergent — if we do not accept that in the end we are people, all alike, sharing the earth among ourselves and also with other sentient beings. davidsuzuki.org/blogs/science-matters/2013/05/tiny-bhutan-redefines-progress/
Posted on: Mon, 03 Mar 2014 04:09:38 +0000
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