Since 2019, NASA and the Kingdom of Bhutan have collaborated on a series of STEM and sustainability projects to tackle community challenges. The efforts have provided valuable insights on conservation and resource management, supporting Bhutan’s development goals.
In December 2024, NASA and the Kingdom of Bhutan completed a 5-year long partnership on conservation, natural resource management, and STEM education. In 2019, Bhutan reached out to the US Department of State to explore opportunities for STEM collaboration. Following King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck of Bhutan’s visit to NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley in November 2019, NASA answered the call to begin collaborating with Bhutan on all things STEM.
Enshrined in their Constitution, Bhutan commits to sustaining a 60% forest cover, effectively making it the only carbon-negative country in the world by absorbing more greenhouse gases—like carbon dioxide (CO2)—than it emits from all human activities. Building on this commitment to sustainability, NASA has supported Bhutan’s development goals, including food security by 2030, by offering data resources, and skills development.
One of the first community challenges the partners tackled involved capitalizing on NASA’s satellite data technology to create the Farm Action Toolkit (FAct). A team of researchers from SERVIR, a NASA and USAID partnership program, updated the toolkit’s framework to better detect and quantify the country’s farmland—an impressive feat considering Bhutan’s diverse terrain of mountain ranges, year-round glaciers, and deep river valleys. This toolkit is utilized to help support and connect more communities in the country, including small farmers in remote areas.
In addition, NASA worked to increase local capacity in geoscience and remote sensing skills through initiatives like the Applied Remote Sensing Training Program (ARSET). At the start of 2024, ARSET collaborated with SERVIR and the Bhutanese company Druk Holdings and Investments (DHI) to organize a workshop for 46 government officials. There, customized local case studies were used to explore solutions for natural resource management, land use planning, and natural disaster tracking. This collaboration not only strengthened Bhutan’s capacities in these critical areas but also fostered greater international partnerships for sustainable development and disaster resilience.
The 5-year partnership also focused on training Bhutan’s future leaders with the DEVELOP internship initiative program, beginning in June 2020 with the first Bhutanese cohort of nine students. The Bhutanese cohorts join a long-running legacy of DEVELOP programming since 1998, making last year the 25th anniversary of providing students and early career scientists with the opportunity to address global issues through hands-on research projects with various partner organizations. During the DEVELOP program, Bhutanese students lived and worked in the United States on 10-week long interdisciplinary projects. They learned to apply NASA earth observation data and satellite technology to address local challenges, working in collaboration with Bhutanese organizations like the Bhutan Foundation, Bhutan Ecological Society and Bhutan Tiger Center. These projects included creating land use and land cover (LULC) maps to track elephant habitats for identifying possible wildlife corridors—protected areas for elephant movement. Another team generated a precipitation and temperature trends overview using satellite data, which will be advantageous for local farmers to understand the changing growing seasons.
Although Bhutan has no formal diplomatic ties with the United States, the collaboration between NASA and the Bhutanese STEM community has reinforced the potential for future partnerships. This cooperation fosters mutual progress in scientific innovation and addresses both local and global challenges through shared knowledge and resources.
Emma Potts is a Spring 2025 Young Professional at the East-West Center in Washington. Emma recently graduated from Columbia University, majoring in Political Science and East Asian Languages & Cultures.