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By Robert Costanza

I  recently returned from a trip to Bhutan, traveling with a team that included colleagues from Portland State University to study the "science of happiness."

Bhutan is a small Himalayan country whose enlightened former king declared that the goal of his country's policy was not gross national product, but "gross national happiness."

I say "former king," because he passed the crown to his son and also, quite remarkably, became the nation's strongest advocate for a new democratic system that has emerged.

With gross national happiness (GNH), this young democracy is charting a new political frontier. The new prime minister, Lyonchoen Jigme Y. Thinley, and the elected government have set up a Gross National Happiness Commission to measure GNH and ensure that the country's policies are aimed at improving it. With GNH as a screen, national goals include becoming the first country to produce only organic food and to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits.

So what do they mean by GNH? Bhutan has recently completed a survey of 8,000 of its citizens, asking them more than 200 questions about various aspects of their lives and how satisfied they are with them. It is what social scientists call an assessment of "subjective well-being" -- an area of research that is getting increasing attention in many quarters of science and policy as part of the emerging "science of happiness."

We have a lot to learn from Bhutan. It is a small county not yet addicted to economic growth in the conventional sense. The Bhutanese can step back and ask the really important questions: What is happiness? How do we best pursue it? How does one person's happiness depend on everyone else's? How important is nature to our happiness and its sustainability? How much and what types of material consumption do we really need to be happy?

The founders of the United States asked themselves many of these same questions. They set up a country devoted to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Bhutan is helping us to better understand the interdependence of all life on earth, the responsibilities that come with individual liberty, and the meaning and measure of happiness.

Bhutan also recognizes that there are other, more objective elements that are important in assessing the country's overall well-being. I traveled with a team that was brought in to help incorporate "natural capital," and the ecosystem services it provides, into Bhutan's national accounting framework. Ecosystem services are the often unaccounted-for benefits that people derive from nature -- clean air, water and soil; a stable climate; recreational and spiritual opportunities to connect with nature; and many more. We estimated in a previous study that globally these services were worth in aggregate more than all of global GNP combined, yet these services do not yet adequately appear in any country's national accounts.

Bhutan sees itself as a leader in rectifying this situation. We held a workshop there last month with more than 40 representatives from several government agencies, universities and others to assess how best to do this. We plan to hold a series of follow-up workshops involving students and faculty from the U.S. working with the Bhutanese to help the country become a model of sustainable well-being and to help us do the same.

The lessons we learn can be brought back to Portland, where the city has taken some measures to gauge satisfaction with basic services but where the "science of happiness" could go further to inform good policy.

Robert Costanza is a professor of sustainability and the director of the Institute for Sustainable Solutions at Portland State University.