A GNH bubble in a GDP world
How Bhutan measures its national development in terms of happiness rather than economic growth
In a world in which countries generally measure their development in their Gross Domestic Product, Bhutan is doing things a bit different. With their culture and constitution rooted in Buddhism, the country prioritises happiness over limitless economic development. While this has worked in the past, continued exposure to the western world could threaten this way of living. In this blog post I will explain how Bhutan’s development policy framework highlights Gross National Happiness as a measurement of the country’s development. Hereby, I will also describe the internal and external tensions of this framework, and the limited applicability of it to the western democracies.
The Kingdom of Bhutan lies in the Himalayas, sandwiched between China and India. The country is small, slightly smaller than the Netherlands, and its landscapes consist largely of mountains and forests. In fact, as Bhutan recognises the intrinsic and instrumental (providing happiness) rather than merely economic value of the forest, strict conservation policies have resulted in the country maintaining a 71% coverage of forest. The vast forest also acts as a major carbon sink, allowing Bhutan to have become the first country in the world to achieve a net-negative carbon status!
Despite forest preservation being strongly embedded in the country’s Buddhist values and fitting in perfectly with the Gross National Happiness (GNH) concept, outside actors have different views on the function of forests. As shown in the tweet above, the World Bank, for instance, has made hints at the missed opportunity of turning this untouched forest into a boost for Bhutan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The discrepancy in views of how forests should be utilised is a good example of Bhutan’s alternative approach to its governance, development and notions of a good life.
Gross National Happiness
Rooted in Bhutan’s long tradition of Mahayana Buddhism, the concept of “gross national happiness” was coined in 1972 by King Jigme Singye Wangchuck. Ever since it has been a core pillar of the country’s development strategy. By the time the country’s first constitution took effect in 2008, the aim of maximising happiness had been turned into a measurable indicator called the Gross National Happiness Index (GNH).
The GNH assesses the individual happiness of people as an outcome of 33 indicators across nine overarching domains. Some of these indicators attempt to grasp the subjective aspects of happiness such as life satisfaction, self-reported health and perception of ecological issues, whereas others explore objective well-being, for example, housing, literacy and household per capita income. The GNH survey is conducted every year classifying people and groups as unhappy, narrowly happy, extensively happy or deeply happy, based on their answers.
While the GNH also looks at socio-economic indicators and materiality, the framework does not see happiness as a direct outcome of material wealth. Happiness, according to the framework, can be expressed through the following equation: Happiness = Richness/Desire. This formula suggests that you will be happy when you are rich enough to meet your desires. The paradox, however, is that the richer you get, the more you desire - meaning you’ll have to get even richer to meet those desires, and so on.
The equation thus suggests that increasing material wealth will never lead to happiness if it is paired with growing desires - pointing at a crucial flaw of Western approaches to happiness. Being aware of this fallacy, GNH aims to turn the focus away from pursuing richness towards minimising desire; with a decreasing denominator under a stable numerator, true happiness can be reached.
GNH and GDP
While originating from a criticism of GDP’s core economic focus, GNH is not opposed to GDP-led growth in itself. In fact, the government has been very clear about wanting to grow into a middle-income country, which entails raising material living standards for its citizens and creating economic and employment opportunities. In fact, in addition to GNH the country has expanded their policy framework to also include the mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and an increase in wealth as measured by the GDP – this policy framework is also known as the 3-G's.
The 3-G’s programme thus balances the country’s aspirations to establish a happy society, maintain carbon neutrality/negativity and ensure economic growth – leading to the widespread celebration of Bhutan as a role model for sustainable development. However, there are some tensions between the 3-G's, which have led to a clash between “strong” and “weak” GNH formulations.
Strong vs weak GNH formulations
The strong GNH perspective criticises consumerism and endless growth – instead promoting “go-slow” policies that limit any economic activity that could lead to adverse impacts on the environment and society. One core pillar herein is the sufficiency-based approach, which argues that modest lifestyles will lift living standards up to sufficient levels.
Contrastingly, weak GNH lets go of the sufficiency principle - instead accepting the contemporary pressures of consumption and continued economic growth. This form is much more in line with the expansion of material aspiration. Thus, while the concerns for environmental conservation remain within weak GNH, they are integrated into a production-based, green-growth project.
Western influence and the push to weak GNH
Following increased exposure to consumerism, western tourism, urbanisation, and higher disposable incomes, the 'weak GNH' formulation seems to have become increasingly popular in the past decades. In fact, recent surveys have even indicated that there has been a change in the perception of what brings happiness, showcasing a decrease in Buddhist values in happiness interpretations, and an increase in material aspirations. The latter is partly a response to social comparison and the ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ phenomenon. In the survey, respondents referred to feelings of competition amongst neighbours in terms of buying things and other expressions of success and wealth.
While difficult to measure, the normalisation of Western lifestyle notions has undoubtedly created friction between the “wants” and “needs” of the Bhutanese population, thereby challenging the very foundations of GNH. Reflecting back on the paradox of the happiness formula, it raises the question as to what level of consumption enhances well-being and happiness rather than detracts from it by leading to dissatisfaction. In turn, this leads to questions about who gets to determine that optimal level of consumption and how would they do that.
Bhutan’s current sustainability status
There’s no denying that GNH-based policies have so far considerably improved the quality of life in Bhutan. While limiting social and environmental costs, they transitioned Bhutan to one of Southern Asia’s highest per-capita GDP countries and allowed the country to become one of the world’s fastest-growing economies in the early 2000s. In fact, Bhutan is expected to graduate from the UN’s Least Developed Countries list in December 2023.
While (some of) this growth may come from sustainable development efforts, the country’s GHGs have been rising alongside its GDP. Despite currently still absorbing their increasing emissions by increasing their forest cover, this will be practically impossible to sustain in the long run - raising concerns that Bhutan’s carbon-negative status might change. Especially as there are currently no indications in any government documents that economic growth will be halted after reaching sufficiency levels, as the philosophy of strong GNH suggests. GNH principles have helped with the adoption of effective environmental policies so far, but policy intervention is needed if Bhutan wishes to stay on a low-carbon development trajectory.
Bhutan’s GNH as an inspiration for other countries?
In a world where almost all nations see economic growth as their primary goal, Bhutan has been under constant pressure from opposing development views. As framed by a government official, it is "not possible to be a GNH bubble in a GDP world” - expansion of GNH will require a paradigm shift away from GDP. While Bhutan has frequently attempted to convince other countries to also adopt more comprehensive development measures such as GNH, this has proven to be hard as the mature democracies of the Western world cannot relate to the balancing Buddhist values – which makes it hard for them to recognise the legitimacy of the GNH framework, let alone adopt it.
While the Buddhism-inspired GNH index might not be directly transferable to the Western world, Bhutan is the perfect example of how alternatives to GDP-focused development are possible. In fact, despite the lack of Buddhist values in Western societies, I believe that the emphasis on well-being and careful consideration of multiple indicators to measure development is something that (to a certain extent) can be applied in any nation.
"We strive for the benefits of economic growth and modernization while ensuring that in our drive to acquire greater status and wealth we do not forget to nurture that which makes us happy to be Bhutanese. Is it our strong family structure? Our culture and traditions? Our pristine environment? Our respect for community and country? Our desire for a peaceful coexistence with other nations? If so, then the duty of our government must be to ensure that these invaluable elements contributing to the happiness and wellbeing of our people are nurtured and protected. Our government must be human." -- The Madhavrao Scindia Memorial Lecture delivered by His Majesty the King, 23 December 2009
Find out what makes the population happy to be part of a nation (beyond the economic conditions) and nurture that - maybe then, western democracies can come closer to the sustainable, human, and caring notions of Bhutan’s governance.
Hellooo!
As this post has mostly focused on the effect of GNH-based development policies on sustainability within Bhutan, I wanted to finish off by mentioning two criticisms of GNH that weren’t in this post’s scope. I won’t go into them, but just wanted to note that GNH is not without its flaws!
One factor that could render the GNH apolitical is that the GNH is only applied to their country. The system boundaries lie at their country borders. Bhutan might manage their forest according to the conservational values of GNH, but at the same time, they source their wood from India - not considering whether this comes from deforestation etc. This has led to some actors calling the framework hypocritical, only caring about forests’ intrinsic value when it’s their own.
The GNH has subjected Bhutan’s citizens to the Buddhist way of living and provided an ideological cover for repressive and racist policies against e.g. Nepalese refugees that “threaten” to alter the Buddhist sovereignty.
I also want to take a moment to acknowledge the huge loss to Aboriginal people of Australia who were denied recognition in the Australian constitution during the voice to parliament referendum yesterday (click link to news coverage). It is heartbreaking to see that the Australian population voted against reconciliation and for continued oppression and discrimination. While indigenous advisory bodies might not be 100% effective in all instances (look at the Sami parliament in Sweden that sometimes seems to be there just for show), it would have been a big step towards the so-desired and much-needed recognition of the First Nations people. Really really tragic.