Exploring opportunities to integrate climate change into Gross National Happiness for Bhutan and its application for global wellbeing-centred Climate Resilient Development

Climate change poses an increasing threat to human wellbeing, but despite this intricate relationship, addressing climate change rarely mainstreams wellbeing objectives. This study explores opportunities to integrate climate change into Bhutan’s development philosophy of Gross National Happiness (GNH) and examines how this experience can inform a wellbeing-centred global application through Climate Resilient Development (CRD). Using a qualitative design combining semi-structured interviews with 41 policy influencers in Bhutan, document analysis, and literature synthesis, this study identifies two complementary points of integration. The first involves identifying and then embedding climate-wellbeing stressors into the 9 domains and 33 GNH indicators used in the nationwide survey that constructs the GNH index. The second focuses on identifying and integrating climate-wellbeing stressors into the GNH screening tool through the 23 determinants used in assessing policies. Building on Bhutan’s GNH and climate experience, this study identifies six global pathways to operationalise wellbeing-centred CRD through strengthening governance and leadership, embedding wellbeing metrics into climate policy instruments, advancing knowledge pluralism and participatory co-production, linking local resilience to global frameworks, mobilising finance for wellbeing-oriented climate action, and multi-level integration. This study positions GNH as a globally relevant guide for transforming climate action towards human and planetary flourishing and offers an integrative approach for nations pursuing wellbeing objectives to combine these with climate action for holistic development. Its global relevance lies in offering a wellbeing-centred approach to CRD.