Buddhism for SDGs
by Linus Dolfini
Bangkok, September 23, 2025
The Institute of Buddhist Management for Happiness and Peace Foundation (IBHAP) is an organization which connects Buddhist teachings to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and uses these teachings to drive the implementation of the SDGs. IBHAP’s focus lies on collaborative action, and trying to implement the approach of connecting Buddhism and sustainability into its partnerships. These partnerships include public, private and civil society actors. All of them aim to drive sustainable development through strategic and synergetic approaches, that are based on Buddhist values, mindsets and principles.
The founder is venerable Napan Santibhaddo, who created the first version of IBHAP in 2015 whilst staying in the UK and studying at Cambridge. After his return to Thailand, he became a monk in Bangkok at the famous temple of Wat Saket – also known as the Golden Mount – where he serves as assistant abbot these days. In Bangkok he continued to establish IBHAP and in 2020 managed to get the foundation officially registered. Due to his affiliation with Wat Saket, he needed the abbot’s permission to properly officialize his foundation. The abbot allowed him to proceed and even became an honorable advisor of IBHAP, at venerable Napan’s request. Hence, the foundation is independent in terms of its management, but it cannot be seen as fully separate from the temple. So far, this has been a beneficial relationship for IBHAP. Once it started growing and attracting new members, in the years after the registration, it became necessary to find a suitable office space for the staff members and volunteers. In the fall of 2023, the foundation moved to one of Wat Saket’s offices in Bangkok right next to the temple grounds, where it is currently located.
When asked about his original inspiration for founding IBHAP, venerable Napan explains that there are two important concepts in Thai Buddhism: Dhamma and Vinaya. While Dhamma is the truth inherent in nature, the truth that has always been there, Vinaya describes the way of life the Buddha taught his followers. To venerable Napan, Vinaya means management. It’s about how we can govern our minds and our attachments and how we can live out our relationships with people, and our societies while applying the Buddha’s teachings. In his view, there has been a lack of Vinaya in Thailand. A large part of Thai Buddhism relies on practicing ceremonies and focusing on inner peace, whilst neglecting the outside. That is also how many people in the West think about Buddhism. The spiritual journey of the individual lies at the center while its relation to the world surrounding it doesn’t seem so important. People work corporate jobs and lead lifestyles that do nothing to advance peace in our societies and our environment, while practicing Buddhist teachings such as meditation to improve their personal mental state. However, when practicing Buddhism, it’s not enough to simply focus on one’s own mind, it has to be about creating peace in the surrounding social and environmental structure. Only through this it will be possible to achieve inner peace as well. This aspect often gets ignored these days. Venerable Napan states, that “we cannot reach inner peace, when we are sitting in the burning house”, and right now our house is burning.
In the beginning it was a challenge for venerable Napan to find people that shared these views and his commitment to address these circumstances. Therefore, he started to invite monks to practice sessions. These sessions included group counseling and connecting ancient Buddhism to modern knowledge. Early on, the main target group were teenagers and young people, but over time the sessions grew popular with the older monks as well. Despite the growing interest the issue of actually getting people involved remained. People might have the right ideas and visions, but people also like easy and comfortable lifestyles, and getting in action can be a hurdle. To overcome this hurdle venerable Napan has relied on the strategies of the Buddha. When the Buddha started teaching, he approached three people who already had followers, so they could in turn spread his teachings. Venerable Napan and IBHAP have tried to do the same and work with individuals – and eventually organizations – that have already established themselves in the environmental and the Buddhist community.
The connection between Buddhism and the SDGs has been the core objective of IBHAP. How the two can be merged to promote inner and outer peace – individual peace, environmental peace, and social peace. To venerable Napan this connection between Buddhism and sustainability has always been apparent. He explains how in some form the Buddha already taught about the SDGs. The Buddha advocated for changing social structures, and reducing inequality, poverty, and hunger. Venerable Napan is convinced, that Buddhism has a lot of solutions for the modern world and just like the SDGs, the core idea of Buddhism is global and includes everyone. Both Buddhism and the SDGs are all encompassing. The merging of the two poses a chance to give the ancient Buddhist wisdom new life and introduce communities to it that are not Buddhist and have limited knowledge in this regard. This approach of being all-encompassing is further reflected by IBHAP as a foundation. Venerable Napan explains, that it is important to work on various projects instead of focusing on a single task. He compares IBHAP to a 7-eleven convenience store and says that it is their strength to be active in so many different fields. To him it is clear that we cannot wait on politics and the ruling class to make the right decisions, so in his words, if we discover an area where work has to be done, we need to take it up ourselves and get involved to improve the situation.
Within the Buddhist community there remain many who think, that addressing societal and environmental issues is not a monk’s responsibility and they see engaged Buddhism critically. Too many Buddhist institutions are still ignorant regarding the things that are going on in Thailand and the world. They refuse to get involved and use Buddhist teachings to address the structural and cultural suffering around them. In venerable Napan’s view this is the opposite of what the Buddha did and taught. Yet he always tries to be open towards sceptics. His way of addressing their concern is to show them, that engaged Buddhism was actually the way of the Buddha and therefore the work he is doing with IBHAP is what Buddhists are supposed to do these days. By explaining his view, he tries to convince them of IBHAP’s cause.
IBHAP strongly focuses on networking and collaborating with like-minded organizations and individuals. Oftentimes IBHAP does not build whole projects from the ground up by themselves. Their strategy is to get involved with actors who already pursue certain projects. This means for example getting in touch with an organization who has been involved with waste management and find out together how they can create a partnership to enhance this project further, by including the approach of connecting Buddhism and sustainability. The many partnerships, the commitment in various areas and its Buddhist essence are what distinguish IBHAP from other organizations and thus constitute its strength.
Furthermore, IBHAP wants to get in contact with a different group as well. Organizations and people who up to this point did not care much for sustainability and are not educated on the subject. IBHAP’s focus lies on helping them to get more familiar with the concepts and reestablishing themselves. According to venerable Napan a big advantage when approaching this group is if you can already show them a track record of what you have done so far and what successes you have achieved. Sceptics will be more open for a collaboration if they get shown proof of the advantages that can come with partnering up.
Fostering collaborations is done strategically but at the same time it is a dynamic process for IBHAP. The foundation knows what they are looking for in potential partners. They are looking to get connected to opinion leaders, who have established themselves in a certain field and bring an audience and a platform. Finding such partners however is done by being open and seeking them out in different places. A collaboration can happen by reaching out directly as well as meeting each other while attending conferences and workshops. Getting more and more involved and building a network has made it easier for IBHAP to find new partners. Venerable Napan calls this way of creating a network “connecting the dots”.
Today, IBHAP is a well-established and well-connected foundation that works with many partners on sustainability issues and bases their work on Buddhist teachings and principles. A sign of how successful the foundation has become is that in 2024 they attended the COP 29 in Baku as well as the G20 gathering in Brazil, to introduce and share their vision of promoting the SDGs and finding solutions that are connected to ancient Buddhist wisdom. Venerable Napan’s goal for the future is for IBHAP to become a bridge between organizations and initiatives on the local, regional, national, and global levels. This is made possible by the fact, that IBHAP has been a foundation that was established on a local level itself, but – especially in 2024 – has become increasingly active on the international stage and has begun to collaborate with global partners. The foundation has managed to get into a position where they can reach out to international organizations and introduce them to their ideas. According to venerable Napan, IBHAP is currently on the path to get more active on a global level and also to use this chance and apply for more funding internationally. Furthermore, the foundation plans to keep strengthening its existing collaborations to ensure that they will be long lasting. Venerable Napan is convinced, that sustainability will get more and more attention in the future, and Buddhists are especially catching up on it – not least because of IBHAP’s work. So, for everyone at IBHAP it’s clear that now is the time to keep up the foundation’s work and its engagements.
