Bhutan

MDG 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability

As an outcome of the highest level of political and policy support for ensuring environmental sustainability and the active engagement of its development partners, Bhutan has enjoyed complete success in meeting its commitment to MDG-7. Bhutan is fully on track to meet the various targets set under the Goal and can be regarded to be an early achiever. The country continues to maintain a healthy forest cover of 72.5% of the total land area with 29% maintained as protected areas. Bhutan's dense forests act as effective carbon sinks and taking carbon sequestration into consideration actually has negative CO2 emissions per capita.

The 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) compiled by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy in conjuction with the World Economic Forum, ranked Bhutan in 4th place among the Asian countries in its environmental performance.

The country is also an early achiever with regard to its targets for the provisioning of water and sanitation coverage in the country with levels envisaged to approach near universal coverage levels by 2015.