Bhutan >>

Photographer Jean-Baptiste Lopez travelled to the remote and isolated kingdom of Bhutan in pursuit of happiness, a concept the Bhutanese value above all else ...

happiness levels, not the GDP. Now its ideas are attracting interest at the UN climate change conference in Doha A series of hand-painted signs dot the side of the winding mountain road that runs between the airport and the Bhutanese capital, Thimphu. Instead of commands to cut speed or check mirrors, they offer the traveller a series of life-affirming mantras. "Life is a journey! Complete it!" says...

ve grown at home; cleaning up the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was worth more economically – in GDP terms – than the carbon absorption provided by the Amazon rainforest. Under current GDP measures, countries that cut down forests for timber exports, dynamite their reefs for fish, pollute and degrade their soil for intensive agriculture and allow farms and factories to contaminate their waterways...

s changed over time • Get the data • Get the 2011 data • See the interactive map • More data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian The world has become more peaceful for the first time since 2009 according to the annual Global Peace Index (GPI) released today. Austerity-driven defence cuts creating gains in several indicators of militarisation and improvements in the Political Terror...

t realised. I'd known that Bhutan was full of gods and spirits, but not that I was tenant to one until the day Choki paid a visit. "What are you doing here?" I ask, delighted. She is hugely pregnant and her new house is far from mine. "I came to appease that deity." "What deity?" "The one in the garden." Choki and Tshering were my next-door neighbours. We shared two halves of a tiny cottage. On my...

s dwindling popularity were not glum enough, "senior aides in Downing Street" are, according to the Spectator 's political editor James Forsyth, "much struck by polling that shows that 40% of Britons would emigrate if they could". Should the aides take the snub so personally? True, this level of disenchantment does not say much for Mr Cameron's trademark wellbeing index, particularly in the context...

s gift will fund the launch of an MA for research into Buddhist culture, as the British capital prepares to host a Buddhist art forum and film festival London is set to seal its status as one of the leading western centres for the study and conservation of Buddhist art, following a remarkable private donation of more than £2.5m to the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. The gift comes from a devout...

t come in dollar bills but - says a report - from strong social networks, employment, health, political freedom and the absence of corruption. And one of the world's tiniest nations is setting an example It's a truism in rich countries that money doesn't buy happiness – but many people still look for it in stores. And there is an assumption that happiness is not possible while people are poor. Most...