Mr. Kinlay Dorjee, Mayor of Thimphu, displays the certificate marking the Bhutan capital’s membership of UNISDR’s Making Cities Resilient Campaign. Photo: Tejas Patnaik/ UNISDR

By Chris Weeks

BANGKOK, 4 April 2018 - Bhutan’s famous Gross National Happiness index has been given a boost with the announcement that its capital, Thimphu, has joined UNISDR’s Making Cities Resilient Campaign.

Mr. Kinlay Dorjee, Mayor of Thimphu, became the 702nd local leader in Asia to sign up to the Campaign when he attended last week’s Fifth Asia-Pacific Forum on “Sustainable Development: Transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies.”

Mayor Dorjee, who spent 15 years as an engineer before becoming the city’s first elected leader, said: “In the last five years we’ve improved clean water supplies, fixed parks and open spaces, tackled crime, tidied up litter, and provided better public transport. But another step to happiness is knowing the progress we’ve made is as secure as possible.

“Our neighbour Nepal had a very big earthquake. We’re in the same Himalayas, and we could be hit any time. Through the ‘Resilient Cities’ campaign, we’ll be stepping up our efforts to protect them, and the economy they rely on, against the threat of disaster.”

Steps already identified by Mayor Dorjee include relocating informal settlements into proper housing and ensuring a 30-metre buffer zones along the main river to prevent flood damage, which is also an opportunity to create public open spaces which benefit all residents. The population of Thimphu was recorded at 104,000 in 2015.

Welcoming Thimphu to the Campaign, Loretta Hieber-Girardet, Chief of UNISDR’s Asia and Pacific office said: “Leaders from cities across the Asia-Pacific know that years of progress can be wiped out in an instant, unless the right plans are in place to prepare for disaster.