"Happiness & Wellbeing: defining a New Economic Paradigm"

On invitation from the Prime Minister of Bhutan, Torbjörn Lahti will participate to the high-level meeting that will be held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, on April 2nd, 2012.

The meeting promesses to be an historical step forward in the definition of a new sustainability-based economic paradigm, focusing on human happiness and the wellbeing of all life forms, in order to replace the current dysfunctional system based on the unsustainable premise of limitless growth on a finite planet.

The conference, initiated by the Royal Government of Bhutan, is gathering the world's best experts on sustainability and alternative economics, that are likely to work on a happiness-based economic model for the consideration of the international community.

Apart from being a significant input for the RIO + 20 conference that is to be held in June 2012, the outcome of the meeting will be the formation of a working group of experts aiming to provide a long-term reference framework for a sustainable economy.
After a few months of intensive work, hope is that summer 2014 would be the moment for the international adoption of a new protocol and economic paradigm, 70 years after the Bretton Woods system...

Interesting to notice : the leadership of this project handled by the small Asian country of Bhutan, about which we generally know so little, for being out of mainstream media coverage.
Indeed the kingdom of Bhutan, that recently become a democratic constitutional monarchy, has been holding a very interesting approach towards alternative and sustainable economic paradigm, as opposed to the globalization system that was seen as a threat.
The response to the increasing population concerns was the creation in the 1970s of a new economic indicator, the Gross National Happiness (GNH), aiming to replace the GDP and its failure to consider values like “happiness”,  “culture”, “equality” or “environmental protection” into its definition of the so-called development.
This indicator - which 4 cornerstones are : equitable socio-economic development, cultural preservation & promotion, environmental conservation, and good governance - has been the guiding development philosophy in Bhutan  for the past 30 years. It is aimed to be spread abroad as an international tool to evaluate policies and projects from “happiness” criteria, instead of considering only capital growth...