http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/35821914
Bhutan instituted Gross National Happiness as its measure of societal progress in the 1970s. GNH is assessed by nine factors that contribute to happiness; psychological well-being, physical health, work-life balance, community vitality and social connection, education, cultural preservation, access and diversity, environmental sustainability, good governance, and material well-being. I think this is a fantastic example of the kind of thing that can happen when a country implements GNH as its measure of progress. Planting 108,000 trees to honor the birth of a prince is an example of them acting on the environmental sustainability portion of GNH. In the United States we wouldn’t see planting 108,000 trees as valuable to our development really because many people would just look at the tree plantings effect on GDP. While some may support something like this, you would not see this sort of policy as a regular thing, because environmental sustainability is not something we measure ourselves on, on a national scale.