While exploring the cosmos of "Beyond GNP": http://www.beyond-gdp.eu/index.html
I. A Short Guide to Gross National Happiness Index (2012) http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Short-GNH-Index-edited.pdf "[...] In the GNH Index, unlike certain concepts of happiness in current western literature, happiness is itself multidimensional - not measured only by subjective well-being, and not focused narrowly on happiness that begins and ends with oneself and is concerned for and with oneself. The pursuit of happiness is collective, though it can be experienced deeply personally. Different people can be happy in spite of their disparate circumstances and the options for diversity must be wide. [...] In the way the GNH Index is constructed, there is a greater incentive for the government and others to decrease the insufficiencies of not-yet-happy people. This can be done by mitigating the many areas of insufficiencies the not-yet-happy face. Not-yet-happy people in rural Bhutan tend to be those who attain less in education, living standards and balanced use of time. In urban Bhutan, not-yet-happy people are insufficient in non-material domains such as community vitality and culture and psychological well-being. [...]" II. Gross National Happiness Commission http://www.gnhc.gov.bt/ " [...] On January 24, 2008 [...] Planning Commission was renamed as the Gross National Happiness Commission. In addition to its existing responsibilities, the body also assumed the responsibilities of the Committee of Secretaries. Its main task as outlined in the executive order was to ensure that GNH is embedded firmly into policies and that proper coordination is undertaken to ensure proper implementation of plans and programs. The membership of the GNH Commission is as follows: PM as chairman, Cabinet Secretary as the vice chairman, secretaries to the ten ministries as well as the head of the National Environment Commission as members, and the GNHC Secretary as the member secretary. Amongst others, the GNH-ization of plans and policies will be focused on the immediate tasks of promoting the following objectives: # Our people – investing in the nation’s greatest asset # Harmonious living – in harmony with tradition and nature # Effective and good governance # Developing a dynamic economy as the foundations for a vibrant democracy." III. Gross National Happiness Commission: Tenth Five Year Plan 2008-2013 http://www.gnhc.gov.bt/wp-content/uploads/2011/10thplan/TenthPlan_Vol1_Web.pdf http://www.gnhc.gov.bt/five-year-plan/ "2.2.2 A Vision of Bhutan in the Year 2020 [...] Economically, the vision pictures that hydro-power led development and growth will have helped the country achieve a high degree of self-reliance, with much of the responsibility for the financing of development in its own hands. Bhutan by 2020 is expected to be able to sustain rising social-sector investments, meet its growing physical infrastructure development requirements and stimulate the further expansion of and growth in economic activity in order to continually raise the standard of living and quality of life. [...] Socially, the Vision anticipates that in 2020, providing equitable access to and delivering improved quality social services across will no longer be an issue. The Vision 2020 expects that the country will in that time boast a health care system comparable to those in developing countries with highly developed indigenous medicine expertise and capabilities. By 2020, child and maternal mortality indicators and life expectancy figures are expected to approach levels comparable to the current average for all developing countries in 2000. [...] In terms of the state of the natural environment, the Vision 2020 is optimistic that the natural environment and natural resource endowments will still be richly intact, with 60 percent of the country forested and sizeable tracts of protected national parks and reserves harboring an incredibly rich bio-diversity, the envy of many nations. The vision anticipates that the environmental conservation approach will be dynamic rather than static and will not merely treat natural resources as something to be preserved but as an immense asset that can also be sustainably and wisely utilized for socio-economic development." IV. Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development UN Resolution 65/309 http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/65/309 V. The U.N. Happiness Project NY Times Op-Ed, March 28, 2012 By TIMOTHY W. RYBACK http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/opinion/the-un-happiness-project.html?pagewanted=all [...] Resolution 65/309 empowers the Kingdom of Bhutan to convene a high-level meeting on happiness as part of next week’s 66th session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. An impressive array of luminaries will be speaking for this remote Himalayan kingdom. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales will open the meeting via a prerecorded video missive. The Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz will speak on “happiness indicators,” as will the economist Jeffrey Sachs. The Bhutanese prime minister will represent King Jigme Khesar Namgyel, the reigning Dragon King of the Bhutanese House of Wangchuck. (The kingdom became a constitutional monarchy in 2007.) For the 32-year-old Dragon King - Bhutan means "land of dragons" in the local Dzongkha language - U.N. Resolution 65/309 represents a global public relations triumph and the realization of a hereditary ambition, initiated by his grandfather 40 years ago, to establish Gross National Happiness (G.N.H.) as an alternate model to Gross National Product (G.N.P.) as a measure of national progress. [...] Landlocked in the Himalayan highlands between the dual economic juggernauts India and China, the kingdom is among the poorest and least developed countries in the world. With a population under 800,000, the average income is about $110 per month. Most Bhutanese do not earn enough money to pay taxes, which are only levied on annual incomes in excess of 100,000 ngultrum, or about $2,000. Despite these limitations, Business Week has ranked Bhutan the "happiest" nation in Asia and the eighth happiest in the world. "The Bhutanese have combined Buddhist spirituality and barefoot economics into a unique model that a lot of other nations can learn from," observes Jean Timsit, a Paris-based lawyer and artist who provided the funding to publish a handbook on "operationalization of Gross National Happiness," based on a conference held in Bhutan in 2004. The 750-page tome helped define G.N.H. and leverage it onto the global agenda. To date, there have also been G.N.H. conferences in Thailand, Canada, the Netherlands and Brazil. According to Timsit, these activities provided the impetus for President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to commission Stiglitz, along with the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and the French economist Jean-Paul Fitoussi, to conduct a study of the "of economic performance and social progress" that included diverse G.N.H. indicators, ranging from walking to reading to the frequency of love making. "The kind of civilization we build depends on the way we do our accounts quite simply because it changes the value we put on things," Sarkozy notes in his preface to the report. "And I am not just speaking about market value." "I believe that while Gross National Happiness is inherently Bhutanese, its ideas may have a positive relevance to any nation, peoples or communities - wherever they may be," King Jigme Khesar Namgyel observed in the preface to the G.N.H. handbook back in 2004, while he was still crown prince. [...] VI. Report of the commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress (2009) http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/documents/rapport_anglais.pdf http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/en/index.htm Against "GDP Fetishism" (Stiglitz) VII. France: Sarkozy Faces Investigation NY Times, March 21, 2013 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/world/europe/france-sarkozy-faces-investigation.html?_r=0 Former President Nicolas Sarkozy was informed Thursday that he would face a formal investigation into whether he abused the frailty of Liliane Bettencourt, 90, the heiress to the L’Oréal fortune and France’s richest woman, to get funds for his 2007 presidential campaign. [...] VIII. Christine Lagarde's flat raided by French police Kim Willsher in Paris guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 March 2013 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/20/christine-lagarde-flat-raided-police IMF chief's residence searched amid inquiry into her handling of EUR 285m payout to Nicolas Sarkozy supporter Bernard Tapie. [...] _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
