July 6-16, 2011
GPI Atlantic
3008 Oxford St. (enter on Cork St.)
Halifax, NS

The principles of Bhutan's Gross National Happiness (GNH) development path -- namely an integrated balance between sustainable and equitable economic development, environmental conservation, cultural promotion, and good governance -- are in close accord with the holistic approach of the Genuine Progress Index. These proceedings, which include inspiring remarks by Bhutan's Prime Minister and Vandana Shiva, mark the launch of a nationwide initiative by the Kingdom of Bhutan to bring the values, principles, and practices of GNH fully into the country's educational system. For example, all Bhutan's school principals have now pledged to create "Green Schools for a Green Bhutan" -- the first time such an endeavour has been undertaken on a national scale anywhere in the world. The workshop which launched this initiative, organized by GPI Atlantic in collaboration with the Ministry of Education of the Royal Government of Bhutan, attracted top international educators from 16 countries. For further documentation on this initiative, please visit www.education.gov.bt. A special interactive Educating for GNH website is under development.

This clip is from a complete interview with Prime Minister of Bhutan Jigme Y. Thinley that was arranged by GPI Atlantic and that will eventually be posted in full at www.thegreeninterview.com, a site that's currently in development and should be launched in February or March. This site will also include interviews with Vandana Shiva, Bunker Roy, Satish Kumar and Gregory Cajete who were also participants in the Educating For Gross National Happiness Workshop in Bhutan in December of 2009, which GPI Atlantic was instrumental in organizing. The interviewer is a well-known Canadian writer and speaker Silver Donald Cameron whose website is www.silverdonaldcameron.ca.

Re: Proposed Amendments to the Wilderness Area Protection Act

Here is a piece from The National that was aired before Thanksgiving in regards to the use of a happiness index by such social networking sites as Facebook.

Put on a happy Facebook

Authors: Linda Pannozzo and Ronald Colman

This user manual, prepared for policy planners and civil servants, provides - in 90 easy-to-read pages - a clear, succinct, and accessible overview of the principles, structure, and policy applications of the Nova Scotia Genuine Progress Index. An additional 47-page chapter (Ch.5) gives concrete case studies of the GPI full-cost accounting methods. The key purpose of this publication is to indicate the practical policy utility and relevance of the GPI.

THE BIGGEST single advance that Nova Scotians could gain from this election might be the adoption of the genuine progress index as the province’s core measure of success.

Authors: Linda Pannozzo, Ronald Colman, Nathan Ayer, Tony Charles, Chris Burbidge, Seton Stiebert, Dave Sawyer, and Colin Dodds

This comprehensive report provides Nova Scotia with its first integrated set of progress measures that assess how the Province is doing —socially, economically, and environmentally. The Nova Scotia Genuine Progress was developed as a pilot project for Canada, and is therefore also now ready for replication in other provinces and nationally.

This 2008 Genuine Progress Index for Nova Scotia—which updates and completes 12 years of intensive research and development—presents the most recent available evidence on all 20 components of the Nova Scotia GPI-—from trends in health, crime, education, wealth, income, economic security, employment, and volunteer work to greenhouse gases, air pollution, fisheries, forests, transportation, energy, waste management, agriculture, and water quality.

The report also updates all key GPI economic valuations—including the cost of crime to Nova Scotia, the economic value of voluntary work, and the benefits and costs (in dollar terms) of the Province achieving its greenhouse gas and pollution reduction targets.

By contrast, conventional GDP-based progress measures misleadingly count natural resource depletion, and crime, pollution, and greenhouse gas emission costs as economic gains, and they ignore the value of voluntary and other unpaid work.

In the past 12 years, GPI Atlantic—whose mandate is to develop new and better measures of progress, wellbeing, and sustainable development—has released nearly 100 separate reports on a wide range of different progress measures. This is the first report that integrates all these measures, and therefore for the first time makes it possible to answer the big question: How is Nova Scotia really doing? And are we really making progress towards sustainable prosperity?