When I decided to attend the side event entitled “Expanding Gross National Happiness (GNH) through CDM Project in the Kingdom of Bhutan,” I thought I was in for a lecture on the workings of the GNH and a perspective on harmonies between sustainability and happiness. Instead, the event covered an interesting confluence of environmental challenges Bhutan is facing.
The majority of Bhutan’s population is located in the rural mountains of the Himalayas, and Bhutan has aggressive goals of providing 100% of these rural homes with renewable electricity by 2020, up from the impressive 50% they currently provide. The vast majority of that renewable electricity is hydroelectric.
But even as they look to further develop hydro in their country, global warming is melting away their glaciers and creating Glacial Lake Outburst Floods. These events are destroying important spiritual sites in Bhutan and also threaten existing hydroelectric infrastructure.
In response to this, the country has sought Least Developed Country Funds to finance a national adaptation project. Deep in the Himalayas, workers built a more robust barrier between two nearby lakes that were both gaining in size and likely to combine into a “supra glacial lake.” Unfortunately, a cyclone came through and wiped out half their work.
Due to the high elevation of the affected region, workers must walk to the site in order to properly adjust to the altitude. Equipment drop-offs are also quite expensive. The government is now working to survey the depth of other lakes that may become overwhelmed and lead to outbursts causing damage downstream.
Bhutan has been seeking UN funds for these adaption projects (under the National Adaption Program of Action) and new large-scale hydro projects (under the Clean Development Mechanism), but has faced challenges there as well. Although they would like to finance more hydro projects to meet their aggressive renewable goals, Bhutan has so only been able to secure one CDM project so far due to the vast paperwork. This has apparently kept smaller countries away from these funds, while China has walked away with 73 percent.
In the Q&A, it seemed everyone wanted to know: what about GNH? In a world based on measuring progress by degree of consumption, we all wanted to know why GNH was not being adopted by other countries.
Disappointingly, Bhutan was not pushing this metric at the negotiations and instead hoped that other countries would come to them if interested.
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