Regions and Countries

	Table of Contents
p. 4 of 20 BACK | NEXT I. Country Performance Assessment A. Economic Performance Assessment B. Poverty Assessment C. Assessment of Socio-Environmental Performance D. Governance: Sound Development Management E. Implementation Assessment II. Country Operational Strategy III. Sector Strategies IV. Regional Cooperation V. Donor Activities and Aid Coordination VI. Cofinancing and Catalyzing External Resources VII. ADB’s Operational Program VIII. Economic and Sector Work Program IX. Local Cost Financing

Country Assistance Plans - Bhutan : I. Country Performance Assessment

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C. Assessment of Socio-Environmental Performance

1. Gender Issues

21. Bhutanese women comprise 48 percent of the population and play a major role in the development of the country. They do not suffer from gender discrimination, as they have equal status with men and enjoy the same level of freedom under the law. Indeed, property inheritance laws are particularly favorable to women, and most households are headed by women. Women's participation in decision making at community meetings is as high as 70 percent. The percentage is lower at district and block levels, but participation is being actively promoted at those levels and is increasing. Representation in the National Assembly and employment in government service have a high percentage of men but these imbalances were mostly due to low girl's school enrolment in the past, when education facilities were often located far from their place of domicile. These imbalances have been slowly improved through the vast expansion of school facilities all over the country particularly in the 1990s. However, some gender imbalance exists in the secondary school enrolment rates. In terms of vocational and tertiary education, there is still marked imbalance.

22. Despite the absence of gender discrimination in Bhutan, and the approximate and improving balance found in many areas of social life, there are a number of issues that impact severely on women. They include high fertility rate, high maternal mortality rate, high infant and child mortality rates, and the gender gap in the adult literacy rate. These have improved enormously since the mid-1980s, but they remain poor. The impact of these problems is particularly severe among the smaller, more remote communities, where isolation provides an extra dimension to the difficulty of resolving them.

2. Human Development

23. In parallel with an impressive performance in terms of economic growth and diversification, major strides have been made in human development indicators, although from depressingly poor initial levels and to levels that have to be improved further. In the case of health indicators, life expectancy rose from 35 years in 1961 to 46 years in 1977, and to about 66 years in 1998. Similarly, between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, the infant mortality rate and the maternal mortality rate were reduced from 102 to 71 per 1,000 live births and from 7.7 to 3.8 per 1,000 live births, respectively, while the under-5 mortality rate fell from 162 to 97 per 1,000 live births. In addition, while the crude birth rate remained high at close to 40 per 1,000 population over the same period, the crude death rate was reduced significantly by more than half to 9.0. Major advances in immunization to 90 percent of the children have virtually eliminated neonatal tetanus, polio, and diphtheria. Malaria and leprosy have been brought under control, although malaria remains a problem in the southern part of the country. The program to iodize salt has significantly reduced iodine deficiency. The most common causes of morbidity today are acute respiratory infections⁷, followed by diarrheal diseases (formerly the most common), skin infections, and tuberculosis.

24. These positive developments were brought about by providing increased access to health facilities (hospitals, basic health units, dispensaries, and outreach clinics); boosting the number of doctors, nurses, and auxiliary health personnel; and improving access to potable water and sanitation. By the mid-1990s, 90 percent of the population had access to free basic health care (up from 65 percent in 1987); 58 percent of the rural population and 70 percent of the urban population had access to safe water supplies (from 31 percent in 1987 and expected to reach 95-100 percent in the next five years); and 80 percent of the rural population had access to means for safe excreta disposal. Moreover, piped sanitation systems either have been completed or are under construction in Thimphu and Phuentsholing. Although housing is generally considered adequate in Bhutan, urban slums and substandard housing have increasingly become a concern due to the rapid growth of the urban population.

25. The main issues facing the country's health authorities are the scarcity of skilled personnel for service delivery and for undertaking promotional and preventive programs, and sustainable long-term finance to support a highly dispersed and expanding health care system that seeks to provide improved services to widely scattered communities (see also paras. 69-70). Difficulties faced on both fronts, as indeed in many other areas of national development, will be made more acute if the population growth is not brought under control. The success achieved in reducing the mortality rate between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s was not matched by a similar decline in fertility, with the result that population growth rate by the mid-1990s had actually increased from 2 percent in 1984 to 3.1 percent in 1994. The Eighth Plan accords high priority to population planning, aiming to reduce the growth rate to 2.1 percent by 2002, 1.6 percent by 2007, and 1.3 percent by 2012. Various aid agencies, such as United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), World Health Organization (WHO), and United Nations International Children's Education Fund (UNICEF), are providing substantial assistance in this area, focusing on reproductive health care and family planning as well as on improving the population database and information system. The Government aims to achieve a replacement rate of two surviving children per woman by 2012 by (i) increasing the contraceptive prevalence rate, currently 24 percent but rising; (ii) expanding education programs, targeting not only girls and women but also boys and men; and (iii) changing traditional attitudes with respect to the benefits of small families, particularly in an economy where population growth is often popularly seen as a solution to perennial domestic labor shortages.

26. As in health, considerable progress has also been made in education over the past 20 or more years. Considering that fewer than 450 children attended secular primary schools in the late 1950s and that the country had no secondary schools at that time, educational achievements in Bhutan have been impressive. The education system in 1999 consisted of 254 primary and community schools, 51 junior high schools, 21 high schools, 7 private schools, and 10 other institutions providing specialized education as well as tertiary and vocational training (including one degree college). Since 1977 alone, the number of teachers has trebled and the number of educational establishments has doubled.

27. The Government provides free education to the people in Bhutan. The primary school enrollment ratio had reached 72 percent (over 100,000 children) by 1999-up from 12 percent in 1980 and from 25 percent as recently as 1990-which suggests that a 95 percent ratio may be reached in 2002 and universal primary enrollment soon after that. Girls now comprise some 45 percent of primary schoolchildren, or over 60 percent of the gross enrollment ratio, and they tend to have lower dropout rates than primary school boys. Aside from such quantitative improvements, both the quality and the internal efficiency of primary education have improved. A curriculum known as the New Approach to Primary Education, introduced in the mid-1980s and extended to all primary schools in 1993, seeks to provide a curriculum based on Bhutanese values and circumstances and to develop skills that are useful to those who leave school at the end of their primary education. The survival rate in primary school increased from 35 percent in 1987 to 64 percent in 1998. As a result of these improvements, the adult literacy rate rose from 17 percent in 1977 to 23 percent in 1980, 38 percent in 1990, and 54 percent in 1998. However, the adult rate is only 28 percent for women, and is particularly low - even 10 percent - in some of the more remote rural areas. The situation is being addressed through nonformal education programs.

28. Secondary education has also expanded rapidly, although a shortage of trained, competent teachers at these higher levels remains a major constraint to faster growth. Even so, the Government has built new secondary schools, recruited expatriate teachers (mainly from India) and, importantly, expanded boarding facilities (now covering 23,366 students) as an inducement to rural students generally and to girls in particular. The gender balance is about 53:47 in favor of boys in junior high schools, 57:43 in high schools, and 52:48 in private schools. At tertiary and vocational levels, males dominate.

29. Notwithstanding the major improvements in basic education facilities, the country faces an acute shortage of skilled and semiskilled workers. The problems thus far have been that the technical and vocational training system has not been demand-driven, the quality of training provided has not been up to the required standard, the institutions offering training have been weak, and job seekers with even basic educational qualifications have been reluctant to accept training for many vocational occupations or trades. The problems are being addressed as a matter of urgency by the Government, with the assistance of ADB and other aid agencies. But inadequate technical skills will continue to be a major barrier to reduced dependence on expatriate labor, to industrial growth, and to the local, productive absorption of an expanding population.

3. Environment

30. The exploitation of the country's rich natural resource base has been at the core of the Government's developmental thrust. Owing to government efforts over time, so far the resource base has remained largely intact. However, environmental problems and natural resource degradation processes are increasing because of high population growth, rapid urbanization, and economic development. Major environmental concerns relate to (i) the high rates of population growth resulting in increasing pressure on the natural resource base, especially on land resources (with negative impacts in terms of land degradation and soil erosion as all arable lands are currently utilized and new marginal lands are being brought under cultivation); (ii) additional risks of land degradation and diminished regeneration capacity of pastures and forests, due to higher demand for livestock products and possible increases in overgrazing; (iii) higher deforestation risks, due to population growth and related demands in terms of fuelwood, materials, and nonwood forest products; (iv) increased risks of soil erosion due to rapid and improper road network development; (v) high rural-urban migration flows and increasing pressure on the already poor urban infrastructures and adjacent land resources, especially in terms of inadequate solid waste management and sanitation systems; (vi) possible negative effects on the environment and cultural integrity that could result from rapid and unplanned tourism development; and (vii) additional possible negative impacts due to industrialization, water resources development (including hydropower), and the indiscriminate growth of mining activities.

31. Recognizing the need to achieve sustainable development, the Government established the National Environmental Committee in 1989 (renamed the National Environment Commission [NEC] in 1992) with a broad mandate in environmental planning and management: overall responsibility for the introduction of regulations, standards, and administrative procedures to control pollution, preserve natural resources, and achieve sustainable development. Accordingly, in the past decade, the Government⁸ undertook a number of activities, including the preparation of the National Environment Strategy (NES)⁹ and the implementation of a program for institutionalizing and strengthening the environmental assessment process in the country¹⁰. Various line agencies have started to revise rules and regulations in their areas of responsibility to incorporate the different environmental requirements, including environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedures. Another piece of environmental legislation, the Forest and Nature Conservation Act, was approved in 1995.

32. More recently, the Government embarked on a comprehensive exercise to further upgrade its environmental management capacities by establishing additional environmental institutions and administrative mechanisms to prepare for the introduction of the required regulatory and strategy/policy implementation framework. Major efforts are now focusing on (i) the rapid formulation of the National Environmental Action Plan to implement the recommendations of the NES; (ii) effective implementation of the recently adopted Environmental Impact Assessment Act; (iii) adoption of a comprehensive (umbrella) environmental act (the National Environment Protection Act); and (iv) the gradual but firm introduction of policy measures and institutional programs to improve the enforcement of environmental regulations, environmental monitoring, interagency coordination, and the overall mainstreaming of environmental concerns into the economic planning and investment decisionmaking process, also through the adoption of market-based instruments.

33. While economic development in Bhutan will continue to be based mainly on hydropower, wood, agriculture, minerals, and services, major development constraints relate to (i) potential competition for alternative land and water uses; (ii) topographical factors increasing the cost of power, transport, and communications; and (iii) limited access to and supply of raw materials located in remote areas. In consideration of such key environmental constraints, there is a strong need to incorporate and integrate environmental management criteria in the overall development planning, decision-making, and industrial policy formulation process. In this context, the setting of appropriate environmental quality standards together with the corresponding effluent and emission standards, the establishment of adequate institutional/administrative procedures to enforce environmental regulations as well as the efficient implementation of the EIA system, are among the main steps required. Current environmental management capacity-building activities in this area are in the right direction.

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