Keynote Address by

Hon’ble Lyonchhen Jigmi Y. Thinley,

Prime Minister of
the Kingdom of Bhutan,
at the
Tenth Delhi Sustainable Development Summit
February 5-7, 2010

Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Guests,

My flight to Delhi took the usual scenic route along the entire range of the
Himalayas between Nepal and Bhutan. The first time I gazed at these mountains
was in 1989. It was breathtaking. I was awed and inspired by the majesty and
grandeur of this unbroken range of snow-clad mountains. Interspaced with some
of the highest mountains in the world, they looked so powerful, pure and pristine.
It was easy to believe then that these were indeed the abode of the Gods.
Dubbed the third polar region of the world, they symbolised nature's supremacy
and its power to sustain life with more than one-tenth of the world's population
directly depending on its waters. My flight along the same route, after a stretch of
absence from the region, have not been as evocative. And the pilots who fly the
route share my experience. Yesterday was the worst.

There appeared to have been no snowfall in the Himalayas this year even at these
heights and the Tibetan plateau beyond. If there were, the rising temperature has
not only melted the fresh snow but stripped further layers from past centuries.
Much of the range looked like a high wall of grey and jagged outcrop of rocks.
The gods seem to have abandoned their home. An ominous blanket of brown
haze threatened to break across the protective line of clouds. Even the mighty
Everest and the beautiful Kanchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world,
looked fragile and crestfallen with profusive patches of grey and brown. Some of
the great glaciers that were clearly visible appeared so very exposed. to conjure
the image of the brevity of the life of icicles that, not so long ago, used to hang
from the eaves of our roofs in the Thimphu winter. All I could feel was a great
sense of guilt and sadness that took me to the thought of my six-year-old grand-
daughter. I decided that I must, very soon, take her on a flight to Nepal just so
that she could witness this dying and disappearing wonder that may not even
survive until her adulthood.

Those who took delight in chastising IPCC for its mention of 2035 as a possible
year by which all the Himalayan glaciers could disappear at the current rate of rise
in temperature, missed the point. They take undue comfort in the imperfect,
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underdeveloped and sometimes, dishonest science of climate change. High in the
vulnerable mountain Kingdom, my fellow citizens and I live, see and feel the
disconcertingly rapid changes. Climate change, I believe, is not only about what
scientists report, it is as much, if not more, about what we actually experience and
from which we suffer. It is about the need for nations and their leaders to take
strong and responsible measures.

Let me be honest at the very outset. The kind of development we have embraced
particularly in the last one century has not been of the kind that has advanced
human civilization. It has not refined human behaviour by employing the finer
senses. Ours is a world driven by the raging greed of a society obsessed with an
excessive desire to consume. The insatiable nature of this obsession is evident in
the way we have adopted the GDP based development model that promotes
“limitless” economic growth and expansion as the means to human well being
and satisfaction. It is evident in the way we have employed our genius to develop
an amazing array of science and technology to exploit and abuse our planet.

Growth is the imperative and for too long we have pursued it without being clear
about the purpose and end state of development. No limit is set on how much
and for how long growth is to continue and whether such a continuous process is
sustainable in a finite world. That any kind of growth according to natural law
must lead to maturation and succumb to decay has been brushed aside. Further,
we have been unmindful of the reality that our planet is no longer as large or as
bountiful as the one that was the inheritance of our ancestors. From a population
of two billion in 1900, it is now home to 6.7 billion people who will number 9
billion in just a few more decades. As each human being inherits less and less
space and resource, technological advancements continue to shrink distance and
time.

And having reduced our planet to a village with diminishing commons, we

continue to consume more to waste more by extracting more resources with
greater efficiency; by poisoning the very air, water and soil that are our sources of
sustenance and being. All the while, the weakening capacity of earth to support
life is becoming increasingly clear. How then can we, the dominant being, along
with all other life forms whose survival is conditioned by our actions, expect to
live on and endure?

Surely, it is our survival that we should speak of at such an occasion. But since it
is the subject of sustainable development that has brought us together, we must
dwell on it if only with a full consciousness that our survival must not continue to
be jeopardized by baser human instincts.

We need to change and mend our ways. We need to begin by acknowledging the
truth that life as we live it is propelling us toward self destruction in more ways
than one. We need to open our eyes to the high price of social dislocation and
environmental devastation that has been paid to achieve GDP targets. Let us
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accept that this powerfully dominant indicator is based on the seriously flawed
belief that unlimited economic growth is necessary to promote human well being.
We have wilfully deluded ourselves by misusing GDP which was designed only to
measure the volume of goods and services transacted in the market at a given
time. We desperately need to arrive at a true understanding of the meaning of
wealth or prosperity in relation to human well being, and develop a more holistic
model and indicator to set human society on a sustainable path.

This raises the question of political will and courage to undertake a paradigm shift
that will upset not only the global economic arrangements but bring about
fundamental changes in the way international and national security, finance,
politics and power are structured and conducted. And then, there are
unfathomable social ramifications arising from such a shift. Are we as nations,
economies and as individuals, prepared to face uncertainties of such nature and
magnitude? Are we capable of grasping the reality that much of the wealth we
have accumulated is, in fact, illusory as made so lucidly clear by the Great
Depression, the recent Asian financial crisis and the global economic recession
that we think we have just overcome? It is, of course, far more convenient to
forget how many so called rich people saw their balloons of wealth burst into
nothingness, just as life savings and security of a home and job disappeared
overnight for millions of ordinary people across the world. Life must go on. and
what better way to do so than to put the wayward cart on the same old track even
though past events suggest that the next time the cart goes off track, it may
destroy both the cart and what is in it. The risks are too high for those whose
concern is for the immediate and for whom the future is for others to care. And
so, the billion-dollar bail-outs and stimulus packages to continue with more of the
same toward a final catastrophe from which the pain of recovery and
reconstruction will be far greater than the pains of a planned and gradual
paradigm shift. The worrying thing is that there are many among us who think we
still have the luxury of time to wait and see.

It is heartening to note that there are various attempts at developing alternative

approaches to guide our future. Among these, perhaps, the most comprehensive
is the ecological footprint analysis to track and measure the integrity of our
ecology or sustainability of development practices. Using some 5,000 data points
for each country per year to produce an annual global footprint called the Living
Planet Report, it compares earth’s biologically productive capacity (includes
resources such as cropland, forest, pasture and fisheries, as well as land to absorb
CO2) with the resources consumed or demanded in terms of global hectare per
person, per year. According to this analysis, global ecological footprint was
roughly half the regenerative capacity of the planet in 1960. By the mid 1980s, it
crossed the critical threshold. In 2005, it was estimated that demand exceeded
supply by 30%. This means our generation has consumed its share of the planet's
resources and capacity and has already begun depriving the future generations of
their share of resources and chances of survival. The Living Planet Report 2008,

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states that, “If we continue with business as usual, by the early 2030s we will need
two planets to keep up with humanity’s demand for goods and services.”

The central issue in sustainable development is how can we reduce production

and consumption levels to stay within the limits of biologically productive
capacity of the planet? How can we ensure that in so doing, we will not lower or
reverse the level of our well being? This begs for an alternative development
model based on a correct notion of what constitutes human well being. As we
reflect on this, we need to be mindfully clear that the planet simply does not have
the capacity to sustain life for much longer if developing countries, with their
larger populations, were to tread the same path that brought the North its level of
affluence and lifestyle.

Sustainable development, as expressed in the ecological footprint account, is a

model for equilibrium between the supply and demand of resources. It is also
about inter-generational equity in terms of resource distribution. But it does not,
at least in conceptual terms, explicitly address in a holistic way, the issue of what
really constitutes human well being which, in its highest state, has got to be
happiness.

We in Bhutan believe that happiness must be the purpose of development. In this

regard, Bhutan has been guided for several decades now by the concept of Gross
National Happiness (GNH), which, while being consistent with the sustainable
development concept, goes beyond it to actually relate development to
contentment and happiness. Conceived by our Fourth King, it is based on the
belief that happiness can be best achieved through development that balances the
needs of the body with those of the mind within a stable and sustainable
environment. It stresses that material enrichment must not lead to spiritual
impoverishment and that it must address emotional and psychological needs of
the individual. Above all, GNH requires that since the single most important
desire of all citizens is happiness, the endeavour of government must be to create
conditions that would enable its citizens to pursue happiness. Even our
Constitution holds the state as having the responsibility of promoting GNH as an
arbiter of public policies and plans. Accordingly, the Royal Government has
undertaken this responsibility through a four-pronged strategy popularly referred
to as the four pillars of GNH. All development policies and programmes of the
Kingdom must serve to strengthen these four pillars. These are:

a) equitable and sustainable socio-economic

development,
b) conservation of the environment,
c) preservation and promotion of culture and
d) promotion of good governance.

These four pillars are elaborated into nine domains, namely: living standard,
health, education, time use, psychological well being, culture, community vitality
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and ecological integrity. The 72 variables that determine the status of each of
these domains are given equal weight in their measurement and can be aggregated
into a single indicator to reveal a more truthful and reliable assessment of a
country’s progress and well being. Full cost accounting shall be our next
endeavour. Sustainability, under GNH, assumes a broader meaning and frame to
include ecological, cultural, social, psychological and political as well as economic
development. We have begun piloting a screening process by the planning
commission, known as the GNH Commission, whereby every policy, programme
and project will now be assessed in terms of its negative, positive or neutral GNH
value.

Some of the results of having been guided by GNH in our development, to

name a few, are:

• A constitutional requirement that our country must always have a

minimum forest cover of 60%. Presently, our forest cover is more
than 72% with 51% of our land falling under parks and protected
nature reserves.
• A policy that values the forest for its ecological value above that of
its commercial worth.
• A voluntary pledge that Bhutan will always remain carbon negative,
meaning that its carbon sequestration capacity will exceed the
amount of GHGs it releases.
• A tourism policy that emphasizes high quality, low impact (volume).
• Stringent environmental laws governing industrial licensing.

We are now in the process of formulating policies that will require the
construction industry to employ green technology and practices. At the same
time, a policy decision has been taken and a process is underway to augment our
school curricula promoting eco-literacy among our students within zero-waste
and green schools.

I have spoken very briefly of my country’s development philosophy to humbly

suggest that as we search for a truly holistic and sustainable development
paradigm, there might be virtue in considering the GNH inspired development
model. I have also taken the liberty to submit to the august gathering that, despite
its limitations as a least developed country, the kingdom of Bhutan, a country
most vulnerable to climate change, is doing its part to protect and save our planet.

The importance of this Summit and its subject is evident in the level and diversity
of participation that it has attracted. My hope is that having come to this great
city with high expectations, we will achieve something remarkable and truly
satisfying of the nature that can only come from courage to reconcile with the
truth that the very survival of mankind is threatened not by external forces but by
its own foolish actions. The destruction of earth and with it our own extinction is
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not inevitable. We have a choice. The power to exercise the right choice lies in
our ability to transcend narrow and short-term national interests and fears.

I urge this most distinguished gathering to exercise wisdom so that we can

together set ourselves on an irreproachable path to Mexico and hence to a safe
and secure future for mankind. As I take my return flight across the Himalayas, I
would like to be able to dream that the gods will return to their abode and that
my grand-daughter will, some day, delight and inspire her own grandchild with
the view of the majestic grandeur of the great Himalayas.

Tashi Delek !