Environment Of Bhutan

Around 70% forest cover, rivers running north to south, and one of the most intact Himalayan ecosystems on earth.

Bhutan's environmental position is the country's most distinctive feature after its politics, and unusually for it, this is not a marketing position but a legally binding one. <h2>Forest cover, and the constitutional floor</h2> Approximately 70% of Bhutan's land area is forested, one of the highest proportions of forest cover of any country on earth. The 2008 Constitution does not merely celebrate this: it commits the state to maintaining at least 60% of national land under forest cover in perpetuity. The mechanism is unusual and worth understanding. When a forest cover project converts forest to another use, the state must reforest an equal area or pay compensation at a fixed rate per hectare into a fund that can only be spent on reforestation. Roads, hydropower schemes and agriculture have all been subject to it. It is why Bhutan's forest cover has stayed roughly flat for decades instead of falling. <h2>Protected areas</h2> The country has a network of national parks and reserves covering a substantial share of its land, plus corridor and buffer forests that connect them. The system is built around linking separate protected areas rather than fencing off isolated blocks — a desig.