Your Cart

• Log in

• Related Products
• Parent
  • • The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability
• Associated
  • • Thinking Globally but Acting Locally
  • • Sustainability in Higher Education
  • • A Roadmap for Sustainable Business Transformation
  • • Exploring the Use of Shellfish Aquaculture as a Sustainable Resource and a Pollution Remediation Method
  • • The Study of an Eco-Friendly Electrochemical Technique for Wastewater Treatment
  • • The Environmental Impacts of Tourism at the Casela Nature and Leisure Park, Mauritius
  • • Developing and Sustaining Gerontology Emphasis in a Social Work Program
  • • Dubai: City of Tomorrow
  • • Ethics and Energy
  • • Evaluation of Large-Scale Decentralized Wastewater Systems
  • More →

Ethics and Energy: A Comparative Study of Gross National Happiness and Sustainability

By Geoffrey Lamberton.

Published by The Sustainability Collection

Underpinning Bhutan’s development is a Buddhist tradition providing a strong ethical foundation to achieve the inherently spiritual goal of Gross National Happiness (GNH). Theoretical equivalence of GNH with sustainability enables ethical influences to be compared leading to the question as to whether Western versions of sustainability are inherently flawed due to the lack of a virtuous moral basis.
A set of sustainability indicators provide data for a comparative study of energy policy, consumption and impacts in Bhutan and Australia contrasting Bhutan’s history of preserving natural and cultural capital whilst making steady economic progress, with Australia’s strong economic performance but lack of progress towards sustainability.
The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of Bhutan’s GNH project for Western developed economies struggling with the challenge of sustainability.

The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability, Volume 5, Issue 2, pp.151-164. Article: Print (Spiral Bound). Article: Electronic (PDF File; 1.208MB).

Dr. Geoffrey Lamberton

Senior Lecturer, School of Commerce & Management, Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Australia