Bhutan: First To Be Carbon Neutral But How and Why?

Kingdom of Bhutan – is the only single country in the world that isn’t only carbon-neutral but carbon-negative. It has replaced the generally and globally accepted concept of Gross Domestic Product ‘GDP’ by its own home-made concept Growth National Happiness ‘GNH’.

Bhutan (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutan) has moved quickly from being one of the most closed states on the planet to an open, more or less, ‘modern’ country. It has its own local traditions that are intertwined with their social and economic spheres as well as religion. It has proved to be on the correct path towards full sustainability as it has to large extent eradicated corruption. It has tightly and gradually linked their traditions and religion to achieve environmental safety, economic growth, social developments including maintaining its own cultural heritage.

There are several reasons that allowed Bhutan to move fast towards reaching the status of being, the first country on the planet, Carbon Negative nation. It has very small population, one million, living on limited piece of land with well preserved nature (https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/bhutan-landscape.html) and biodiversity. It has implemented rules to regulate the protection of its land and to use eco-tourism to support its public services specially education and health. Modern technology arrived to Bhutan very late, by the end of the 20th century, yet it is moving slowly in the process of urbanisation with focus on own self-sufficiency of food and respect for nature. This is though being located between two major economies, i.e. China and India, with much growing technological changes. It has banned export of its natural resources and it is using hydroelectric power as main source of electricity. It has already banned the fossil-fuel to be used by its industries. Its economy is based on agriculture yet with environmentally friendly processes. It is also moving towards the use of electric vehicles. In 2030 the country will start to absorb much more (several times) carbon than it emits and it will also be free from the air-pollution.

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