The Philosophy Of Gross National Happiness (GNH?

Bhutan is internationally known for the philosophy of Gross National Happiness (GNH). GNH has become a multidimensional development approach supported by the foundations of four pillars which include Sustainable and Equitable Socio-Economic Development; Conservation of Environment; Preservation and Promotion of Culture and Tradition; and Good Governance. Bhutan is unique in paving the way to measure development progress in terms of GNH rather than GDP (Dixon. F, 2004), which is not without challenges especially given that development in the conventional sense is generally associated with increased negative costs which may be direct or hidden to the environment and the society at large.
The Royal Government of Bhutan (RGoB), in the pursuit of
The collective emissions from these vehicles will be emitted in the city causing air pollution which invisibly causes human health problems such as respiratory problems. The contribution of auto emissions to greenhouse gases will be much higher. In reality, neither the seller nor buyer of the gasoline pay for the full health costs associated with the automobile emissions. Such negative health impacts not directly involved in the transition are considered external to the market, since they are not included in the selling price (MRP) of the gasoline. This can be negative externalities since hidden cost is not reflected in the price, which the society has pay for medicines and medication (Bickel, P and Friedrich, 2005). Another good examples of it can be, smokers' health costs shared by society and risk to nonsmokers (second-hand smoke). There are externalities associated where nonsmokers’ exposure to the smoke generated by smokers’ which results in various cancers, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Additionally, the financial externalities that result from public financed health care will become more important as Bhutan works as free healthcare system (“World Health Organization Report,”
The negative will impose external costs for example, the use of pesticides in irrigated rice production. Pesticides are applied to paddy rice in fields of standing water to reduce loss of production from pest. The chemical residues remain in the water when it is drained from the paddy field. Others located downstream, later use that water for drinking, irrigation, and for livestock productions. Those downstream users of the polluted water suffer if the pesticide residues cause health problems if residence enters into food chain of humans or their animals. However, these recipients of negative effects have no way of charging the upstream rice farmers for polluting the water. The market fails to include the negative costs of pesticide residues in the upstream rice farmers’ production costs (Tashi, 2013). Where as positive will provide external benefits, for example; a beekeeper locates beehives in the orange orchard of their neighbors’ to produce orange flower honey. By doing so, the bees will collect nectar and pollens from the orange flowers to make the honey. At the same time, bees will transfer pollens between the flowers, which help to fertilize the flowers. In this example there are two positive production externalities; the beekeeper gets positive production