Policies in Bhutan

For the last two days (13-14th March, 2012) I was attending a workshop in Paro. It was yet another workshop on policy and adaptation issues. The title of the workshop was "Legal and Policy Tools to Adapt Biodiversity Management to Climate Change". The workshop was beyond doubt very informative and interesting. I have learnt many new things and understood various adaptation issues that countries across the globe is adopting to combat "climate change".
I was surprised by the number of "acts", "rules", "policies" that exists in our country. Bhutan is indeed bestowed with great natural habitat and forest cover, handed over by our ancestors who strived very hard to leave behind the environment in the way they were handed by their fore fathers. The conservation this far surprisingly came without the existence of any rules/acts/laws. The conservation came with the existence of total anarchy. I think Dzongsar Jamyang Khentse rightly pointed that "best way of living is anarchism".
It is really hard to believe the number of laws/rules/policies that exist in our country, but are rarely followed. What is bothering me too much is the framing of laws which are never bothered to implement or follow. What is the use of framing policies when there are always some people above the law?
With the existence of countless number of laws/acts/policies, there are same number of contradiction between various laws, giving birth to conflicts between laws which ironically are supposed to reduce same.
If i could try to list some examples of failure of rules/acts:
1. Sometime in 2006 or 07, Thimphu City Corporation started to employ quite a good number of environmental inspector with the task to impose fines to those people who litters the area.It all started with great pomp and show initially but with time it has finally vanished as i expected when it all started.
2. Another classic example is "visioning Bhutan free of plastics". Plastics in Bhutan was officially banned sometime in 1999, but if you look around even after more than a decade, we can see people freely using plastics carry their shopping goods.

In short I am saying that, when there are time and resources to frame policies, we should also have time and guts/strength to implement it. Bhutan has so many good policies and rules but we just lack implementation. Bhutan receives appreciation for policies and laws, let us strive to receive same for implementation.

Palden Drukpa.

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