It’s one of the most challenging international airports in the world, with a hairy approach that involves threading the plane through surrounding Himalayan peaks.
Fewer than 15 people are said to be allowed to pilot passenger
planes into Paro airport, near the Bhutanese capital of Thimphu. But getting
on the ground safely isn't the only reason Ron Colman feels his nerves settle
each time he sets foot in the country.
'You get out and it’s quiet,' the Nova Scotian said over a
recent lunch near Halifax, a day before leaving for his latest stint as an
adviser to Bhutan’s government. I find it not that hard to live there. It’s a
completely different culture and environment and everything, and yet in some
way it also, to me, feels more human. It feels more what life is supposed to be
about.'
Whether Bhutan can retain that uniqueness, though, is a question
that looms large in the remote South Asian country. The modern world is beating
at the door.
Some of the changes have been seen as positive for the poor country,
where agriculture dominates and per capita income was $1,832 last year,
according to the World Bank. The 2007 commissioning of the Tala hydroelectric
project, which generate s nearly five billion kilowatts annually, all sold to
India, helped the country boast the world’s second-fastest growing economy that
year.
But there is concern about other developments. Western
influences pouring into the country through television and the Internet,
unknown only a decade ago, are impacting local culture. People who once walked
to work, socializing as they went, want to drive because a car is the latest
status symbol. There are traffic jams in the capital.
Leaders of the constitutional monarchy have become increasingly
concerned about the possible effects of these rapid changes. They have been
working fast to give real meaning to the country’s official attitude, first
stated by the king in 1972, that 'Gross National Happiness' is more important
than traditional economic measurements.
'To be honest, we spent some years … simply taking refuge in the
vision, concept, and the term itself,' Prime Minister Lyonchhen Jigmi Y.
Thinley told an education conference that Mr. Colman helped
organize. 'I now know that this option no longer exists.'
The country’s leaders want to entrench the concept as the
guiding principle of their nation’s development. And in the thick of this push
is Mr. Colman, director of the progressive Nova Scotia think tank GPI Atlantic.
He first came to Bhutan seven years ago on a working visit, at the behest of
that country’s government, and has been ramping up his time there. Returning
last week, he was unsure when he will be back in Canada.
All decisions are being made by Bhutanese officials, Mr. Colman
stressed, but his group has come to play a key role in the country’s efforts to
manage development. They’re involved in projects that include incorporating the
principles of GNH into the school curriculum, a push to get the country’s
entire agricultural output certified organic, setting up a center to
demonstrate the principles of GNH and developing national accounts that
incorporate natural, social and cultural capital along with the traditional
measurements.
'Our role you might say is a bit of a match-making role, you
just try to draw on the best people in the world,' explained Mr. Colman, who
emigrated to Nova Scotia early in the 1990s but retains hints of an Australian
accent. 'These people, by the way, in our experience, are very enthusiastic
about coming and helping. Because they’re frustrated that their ideas, just
like we are in Nova Scotia, haven’t taken root in the fabric of the system.'
The lengthening list of people Mr. Colman’s group has helped
bring to the table includes Vandana Shiva, the Indian champion of small-scale
agriculture and winner of the 'alternative Nobel prize,' and American academic
Robert Costanza, a pioneer of ecological economics.
'Bhutan, which looks idealistic, is actually being realistic
about what you need for a sustainable society,' Dr. Shiva said from New Delhi.
'They have enlightened leadership that says we will not become a destination
for mass tourism, we will not copycat development models.'
The stakes are high.
David Orr, professor of environmental studies at Ohio’s Oberlin
College and participant in the December conference, argued there that the
Bhutanese have to become 'discerning consumers' of the Western model and its
culture. And it needs to start in schools.
'If the Bhutanese are to maintain their equilibrium, part of the
curriculum has to be a really in-depth look at Western culture, what worked and
what didn’t work,' he said from Ohio.
Bhutan is starting from a different place than many developing
nations. Never colonized and effectively isolated by its remoteness, it begins
with a fairly clean slate. The effects of modernity are still faint, and
progressives think there is the potential to create something groundbreaking.
'If Bhutan can be successful in this more integrated development
philosophy – this development approach that tries to integrate the economic,
social, cultural and environment variables – then it could be a … valuable
model for other countries,' Mr. Colman said. 'Both developing and developed
countries. Because we have not succeeded in integrating those models very
well.'
FINDING MEANING
Gross National Happiness sounds a bit airy-fairy, the sort of
idea an idealistic undergraduate philosopher would dream up. And for a long
time its practical meaning was never settled.
But as Bhutan faced increasingly rapid change, the country’s
leaders decided to flesh out the concept. They came up with a list of
indicators that would assess the population’s mood.
Residents were asked to rate their psychological well-being,
time use, community vitality, culture, health, education, environmental
diversity, living standard and governance. Households were assessed to see
whether they rated sufficiently on each category, and the results were crunched
into numbers that would allow districts to be compared and trends to be
identified.
The process has moved beyond a method of assessing the
population. The country’s leaders now have a screening tool incorporating the
principles of GNH that they can use to assess whether decisions fit its
criteria. And sometimes the result is dramatic.
The country has recently been grappling with the question of
joining the World Trade Organization. Nineteen of the 24 commissioners on the
GNH commission were in favour. Then they ran the decision through the screening
tool.
'The results were reversed, 19 out of 24 then said, 'No, this
will not further GNH objectives,’ ' said Ron Colman, a Canadian who is advising
the Bhutanese government. 'So it’s interesting because it works, it can
actually reverse a major policy decision.'
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