2
                                                                                                                     2.1
                                                                         CGrowth,
                                                                              h a pDevelopment
                                                                                       t e r and Happiness
                                                                                            Growth,
                                                                                    Development
                                                                                   anD happiness
                              Since 1971, Bhutan has rejected GDP as the only way to measure progress—in
                        its place, it has championed a new approach to development, which measures
                        prosperity through formal principles of gross national happiness (GNH) and the
                        spiritual, physical, social and environmental health of its citizens and natural
                        environment. For decades, this belief that wellbeing should take preference over
                        material growth has remained a global oddity. Now, in a world beset by collapsing
                        financial systems, gross inequity and wide-scale environmental destruction, this
                        tiny Buddhist state’s approach is attracting a lot of interest. In 2011, the UN
                        adopted Bhutan’s call for a holistic approach to development, a move endorsed by
                        68 countries. A UN panel is now considering ways that Bhutan’s GNH model
                              can be replicated across the globe.*
     In This Chapter...
     ‰ Introduction                                                        ‰ Economic Development
     ‰ Progress                                                            ‰ Happiness
     ‰ Economic Growth                                                     ‰ Insights into Human Behaviour
      * As Annie Kelly writes in The Guardian, Washington, DC, 1st December. 2012.