The Compass

In 2001 the use of all drugs was decriminalised meaning possession of drugs was now identified as a public health issue rather than a criminal offence. Today, whilst drugs remain illegal, users do not receive a criminal record and are instead referred to rehabilitation and treatment programmes. Drug related deaths, HIV infection rates and use of legal highs are at an all-time low.

My Perfect Country traces the development of the policy over the last 15 years and asks whether other countries should use this model for their own legislation on drug control. The architect of Portugal’s policy Joao Goulao explains how the policy was implemented and Doctor Rodrigo Coutinho explains how it was taken on by health services. Our roving ambassador hears from the volunteers of mobile units that does not wait for patients to come to them and hears emotional recovery stories from former users. Presenter Fi Glover, academic Henrietta Moore, professor Alex Stevens from Kent University andTony Duffin of the Ana Liffey drug project in Ireland discuss how far Portugal’s policy has been successful and whether it would work in the perfect country.

(Photo: A Portuguese flag flies above a demonstration against austerity, Lisbon, 2013. Credit: Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP/Getty Images)

Costa Rica has implemented a progressive energy policy that is leading the way in the race to be carbon neutral. Although the country covers only 0.1% of the world’s landmass, it is home to 5% of its biodiversity, and has the greatest density of species in the world. A quarter of the country is protected land, including 26 national parks. While lucrative timber logging once eroded the country’s forests, using a programme of financial incentives from the government, deforestation was reversed. Costa Rica went from having one of the worst rates in the world to almost zero by 2005.

In 2007 the government announced Costa Rica would be the first carbon-neutral country by 2021 – a race that includes Iceland, Norway and New Zealand. In 2015 this small Central American republic achieved another environmental milestone by generating all its electricity using 99% renewable energy.

Do Costa Rica's green credentials make it a contender for the perfect country policy pile? Fi Glover and digital entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox debate, with the help of professor Henrietta Moore from the Institute for Global Prosperity and Ilimi Granoff from the Overseas Development Institute.

(Photo: The hydroelectric dam in Cachi, Cartago, 40 km west San Jose. Costa Rica expects to conclude an energy matrix made in a 97.1% of renewable sources, making the country one of the cleanest in the world. Credit: Ezequiel Becerra/AFP/Getty Images)

Fi Glover and digital guru Martha Lane Fox look at the digital revolution pioneered by the government in Estonia – where people vote, get their medical prescriptions even pay for their parking, online. With the help of Professor Henrietta Moore from the Institute for Global Prosperity and Taavet Hinrikus from Transferwise they ask - could it work where you are?

Estonia’s digital services have revolutionised the country since its independence from the Soviet Union with 600 services now being available online. E-Estonia has the fastest broadband speeds in the world, was the first to allow online voting in a general election, all classrooms are online, all medical records online, and it has more start ups per person than Silicon Valley in California. But does the networked society come at a price?

(Photo: People gathered on 20 August 2010 in Toila, Estonia for the world's first ever digital song festival. Credit: Raigo Paulla /AFP/Getty Images)

How are black Americans represented and what does it mean to be black in America today? Rajini Vaidyanathan discusses with those involved in politics, culture and activism.

Travelling widely across the country she hears from families in Atlanta, activists in Missouri and academics in New York City. She speaks to the artist Kehinde Wiley about his subversive attempts to literally paint power differently; to the poet Tracy K. Smith about the vital role stories can play in encouraging empathy and hears from the civil rights icon John Lewis why he is using comic books to tell his story.

Rajini discusses what is taught in schools, what is shown on TV, and how the reality of being black in America means new black migrants to the United States are increasingly retaining their immigrant identity to avoid being considered ‘African American’. She discusses the next generation of leadership, who can authentically lead the Black Lives Matter movement, and attends a remarkable convention in Baltimore encouraging Americans to have ‘courageous conversations about race.’

Image: Eyshana Webster (L) and other students from John McDonogh Senior High School in New Orleans, Louisiana. Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Rajini Vaidyanathan examines segregation. The Brown versus the Board of Education case and the civil rights movement were supposed to have brought Americans together, but in Kansas City Rajini sees for herself the much more complicated legacy of desegregation. On the one hand, splintering solidarity in the black community; on the other a city where white and black Americans still live quite separate lives.

Rally in Brooklyn, New York City 2015 against documentation that showed that black and hispanic students are increasingly confined to worst performing schools. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Rajini Vaidyanathan explores economic opportunity – or lack of it - amongst black Americans. She speaks to the academic whose study suggests employers think being black is as bad as having a criminal record but that they weren’t trying to be racist, and hears from senior corporate executives who have witnessed the subtle ways racial prejudice operates in the workplace.

In Kansas City she explains how government rules established during the New Deal locked black Americans out of home ownership for a generation, in west Philadelphia she meets the civic leaders with a comprehensive plan to improve the city’s poor, black neighbourhoods, and she hears from the San Francisco non-profit trying to reduce the very high cost of being poor.

(Photo: A man and woman on a street in Baltimore, Maryland. Credit: Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

Rajini investigates the criminal justice system. In Nebraska she visits the conservative politician promoting laws to reduce the number of people behind bars. Will that help black Americans? “I hope so” he answers.

Elsewhere she hears from critics who argue that the system can never be reformed, only broken; that the system is not fair, the police need to be disarmed. She visits the police chief advising President Obama on the way forward, who acknowledges the problem but argues that “all black lives matter”, including those killed by crime, and that protesters must accept that the police are part of the solution. Rajini also spends time with the police force teaching all its officers how to be ‘ethical protectors’.

Protests against shootings of young black men by the police have pushed the issue of race to the top of the public agenda in the United States. Now BBC Washington correspondent Rajini Vaidyanathan, who has covered many of the recent protests, sets out to examine some of the deep, underlying structural issues which America still has with race.

(Photo: A 19-year-old resident of Cleveland (holding sign), marches with other activists on St Clair Ave, Cleveland, Ohio, 2015. Credit: by Angelo Merendino/Getty Images)

During the last four years California has been ravaged by drought and wildfire that has left people without homes and farmers without crops. Unlike a lot of American states most Californians acknowledge climate change is contributing to serious environmental problems and Governor Jerry Brown is leading the way in developing strategies to try and combat it. In the final programme in the Local Warming series presenter Sasha Khokha takes a trip around her home state of California to see what climate change means to people and how far they are willing to go to address it.

(Photo: Interviewee Jessica Pyska infront of her burnt home. Credit: Sasha Khokha)

Extreme weather has claimed many lives in the Philippines. The archipelago has been battered by so-called ‘Super Typhoons’ and only last month, Super Typhoon Koppu wreaked havoc in the northern island of Luzon, killing 60 and leaving hundreds of thousands evacuated from their homes. Another storm two years ago left thousands dead. Meanwhile, climate change is said to be impacting crops and reducing yields. So it might come as a surprise that Filipinos, as a nation, are far from the most climate aware people on earth. Indeed some of the most vulnerable, living in isolated rural areas, might know little about the issues around emissions and global warming. In this programme, Filipino reporter Nicole Jacinto asks why, and meets some of those determined to change the situation.

(Photo: A man shelters from the wind in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Haiyan. Credit: Getty Images)

The first episode focuses on Nigeria, where migration caused by desertification is leading to bloodshed as cattle herders move south from their traditional routes and into conflict with settled farmers. Meanwhile, increasingly intense rainfall in southern Nigeria causes flooding and creates enormous gulleys which are swallowing houses, farmland and even schools. Presented by Ugochi Oluigbo - a business and environment correspondent and news anchor for TVC News in Nigeria – the programme asks how far Nigerians can afford to take action over global matters like climate change. Yet somehow the country has to adapt. Ugochi explores how climate change is making an impact on women in rural Nigeria. She also discovers how young people in Nigeria are engaging with the issue.