Fi Glover, Martha Lane Fox and Henrietta Moore are on the hunt for solutions to the world’s problems. Their aim is to create the perfect country made up of the best global policies that actually work. In this episode, the panel hear the voices, opinions and criticisms of the World Service audience. Together, they debate how the perfect country is shaping up. The policies include: Rwanda reducing the gender pay gap, Cuba’s disaster preparedness, Germany’s refugee integration, Norway’s prison syst...
Feb 21, 2018•27 min
Fi Glover, Martha Lane Fox and Henrietta Moore from the Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London are building an imagined utopia made up of the best solutions to the world’s problems. They look at a sustainable fishing scheme in British Columbia in Canada called catch share, a quota system based on dedicating a secure share of fish to individual fishermen, co-operatives or fishing communities. It means fishermen have the ability to catch a certain amount of fish each year and...
Feb 14, 2018•27 min
Nepal has managed a record achievement for its maternal mortality rates. Between 1991 and 2011, it has seen an 80% decline in the number of women dying in pregnancy, during labour and after childbirth - meaning it is one of the few countries on track to achieve the fifth Millennial Development Goal. The foundation of their achievement comes from an outstanding women’s volunteer programme known as the Female Community Health Volunteers. Currently over 50, 000 women volunteer to distribute life-sa...
Feb 07, 2018•27 min
How has Norway managed to have the lowest rate of prisoners reoffending in Europe, and one of the lowest in the world? Their policy revolves around the fact that the justice system see taking their citizen’s freedom away as punishment enough, and prisoners are expected to carry on a life as similar to normal society as possible. As a result, high-quality education is given to inmates – as well as opportunities to work, to receive mental health support, and remain self-sufficient by cooking their...
Jan 31, 2018•27 min
Is the way Germany has handled refugee integration a model other countries could follow? In September 2015 the German chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to take in one million mainly Syrian refugees, and over the past three years more refugees have arrived in Germany than anywhere else in the European Union. But Germany did not just open its doors to those seeking refuge, it recognised that integrating them into society was crucial. The foundation of this is free but compulsory state-run German lan...
Jan 24, 2018•27 min
After 2017 brought a string of hyper-active and destructive hurricanes in the so-called Atlantic Hurricane Season, it is said that Cuba is a world leader in both hurricane preparedness and recovery, as it has one of the lowest fatality rates. It has been a cornerstone of their government for decades – at the heart of the model is the promotion of local level decision-making that relies on co-ordinated early warning systems, high-quality weather forecasting and community preparedness. Most notabl...
Jan 17, 2018•27 min
Rwanda has closed its gender gap by 80% since the 1994 genocide. How has the country done it, and should others be following its lead? Under the leadership of President Paul Kagame, the 2003 Rwandan constitution states that at least 30% of all decision-making jobs in government or public organisations must be held by women. The constitution enshrines the right to equal education opportunities for girls and boys, the right to equal pay in public sector jobs, and the right for women to own and inh...
Jan 10, 2018•27 min
In Sierra Leone, the Ebola outbreak in 2014-16 caught everyone, including the World Health Organisation, completely unprepared. Award-winning reporter Umaru Fofana talks to Tulip Mazumdar about his own experience of the outbreak; plus we hear from both local and western doctors and aid workers about the fight to bring the disease under control. Central to this was persuading grieving families – with the help of social scientists – to change their burial practices. (Photo: Health workers carry a ...
Jan 03, 2018•27 min
When the Rana Plaza building collapsed in 2013, it drew worldwide attention to the horrific conditions for workers in the garment industry. Over a thousand people were killed one day after the building’s owners ignored warnings about cracks. Four years later, contributors on the ground wonder if anything has changed in the rush for profit in Bangladesh. (Photo: A Bangladeshi worker who was rescued from the collapsed poses on the site of the former Rana Plaza garment complex poses at the former s...
Dec 27, 2017•27 min
In the most earthquake ready country on earth – Japan - a massive tsunami in 2011 hit two schools in Kamaishi and Okawa. At one everyone survived; at the other 74 children were killed. What went wrong? We hear gripping contributions from pupils at both schools, including Mai Ogasawara and Tetsuya Tadano; location recordings from Mai Nishiyama and Yu Wada Dimmer on the aftermath of the giant wave; plus interviews with Richard Lloyd Parry, author of Ghosts of the Tsunami and Robert Muir-Wood, auth...
Dec 20, 2017•27 min
4/4 The shores of the Pacific are irresistible to tourists. From the coral wonders of Australia’s Gold Coast to the loneliest South Pacific atoll, local people make their living from the beauty of their surroundings. In the final edition of our series on the world’s oceans we explore how native traditions and the booming business of tourism co-exist. Many Solomon Islanders would like to see more tourists but worry about the loss of native culture. We meet local people anxious to hang on to tradi...
Dec 13, 2017•27 min
3/4 As the ice of the Arctic and Southern Oceans melts, its composition changes completely. Ships can now sail through the Arctic from China to Europe; seals, walrus and polar bears have to move further north and find different prey. In the third edition of our series on the world’s oceans we visit Svalbard and Alaska to discover what change means for the people of the Arctic as the warming climate brings more trade, more tourists and new species. In the Norwegian territory of Svalbard residents...
Dec 06, 2017•27 min
2/4 Only now is deep sea exploration beginning in remote parts of the Indian Ocean to reveal what lies on the ocean floor, what treasures can be found that could be used for scientific and technological development. Underwater mining for minerals is being carried out by several nations and there’s a huge rush around the ocean rim to promote what’s called the Blue Economy, profiting from the ocean and its riches. We travel around the Indian Ocean from South Africa to Mauritius and North West Aust...
Nov 29, 2017•27 min
1/4 In this first episode we cross the ocean from the Grand Banks to the tip of South Africa via Reykjavik in Iceland meeting those involved in fishing and working along the shores of the Atlantic. Beneath the waves, oceanographer Jon Copley from Southampton University provides a fascinating underwater commentary, demonstrating how currents and ocean ridges link the lives on every shore of the Atlantic. The Atlantic Ocean covers more than 100 million square kilometres, stretching from southern A...
Nov 22, 2017•27 min
4/4 American democracy can easily frustrate change. The country’s Constitution is almost impossible to amend. The many interest groups swirling through Congress often paralyse or colonise it; and corralling 50 states is often beyond the capacity of the most able president. Yet America has been home to a string of popular movements across the last two centuries that have brought vigour and change to what otherwise might have been a sclerotic political system. It mattered, of course, that the coun...
Nov 15, 2017•27 min
3/4 One of the most fascinating, and least understood, features of American democracy is that individual states possessed a scope of power much greater than what was given to the central government in Washington. On so many issues, the states went their own way. Whether to teach religion in schools; legalise or outlaw slavery; allow divorce or the sale of alcohol or the sale of firecrackers; permit birth control, pornography, or gambling - on all these matters, and many others, it was up to the ...
Nov 08, 2017•27 min
2/4 The usual way to tell the story of money and democracy in America is in terms of a fall from grace. Once upon a time, democracy was pure, with little corruption, and rich Americans had no influence upon policymakers. The truth is more complicated. By the mid-19th Century, America had the largest, densest, and most labour-intensive democracy in the world. None of this had been anticipated by the country’s founders, who had made no provision in the Constitution for funding an electoral system ...
Nov 01, 2017•27 min
1/4 America has the world’s oldest continuously operating democracy. Its political institutions have long been a model for democrats everywhere. Yet, American democracy is also troubled. In this four-part series, American historian Gary Gerstle takes a penetrating look at his nation’s democracy and the reasons behind the crisis that besets it today. In this episode, he goes back to the framing of the US Constitution. This gave only limited powers to the federal government, but by the mid-19th Ce...
Oct 25, 2017•27 min
4/4 Angela Saini is on a farm in a rural corner of Karnataka in south India, meeting the team behind Akshayakalpa – a kind of Farm in a Box. When you are on a low income, how can you possibly find a way to raise the funds you need to get into farming, or simply keep your existing farm afloat? Angela meets an entrepreneur who thinks she has found the answer. Angela heads back to Nairobi to catch up with the founder of OkHi – the app that lets you find any address in the city, which we discussed e...
Oct 18, 2017•27 min
3/4 OkHi is a new navigation device which runs on your mobile phone and allows you to find an address, however remote, with GPS coordinates and a photo. It should be accurate to within ten metres and copes without the usual massive infrastructure changes required by sat nav systems. Just outside Bengaluru in India, we take a look at the problems of getting access to banking services in remote communities and the solution being offered by a new company called Sub-K, and their human ATMs. Finally,...
Oct 11, 2017•27 min
2/4 A Kenyan company is planning to bring reliable stable internet and rugged tablets to remote schools with the help of BRCK, a solution to internet problems in the shape of a brick. Part two of four. In the northern Indian state of Assam, people have the lowest access to good quality eye care in the whole of India – 18% of all cataracts happen in this one state. ERC Eyecare has a business solution aimed at changing all that. We also return to visit the stethoscope creators from last week’s epi...
Oct 04, 2017•27 min
1/4 Exploring the reality of being an entrepreneur serving the “bottom billion” – a new mini-series from The Compass. In India around a fifth of people still live below the poverty line, according to the most recent World Bank estimates. Businesses selling to this market need to keep prices low. In the famous tech city of Bengaluru, south India, we visit a veterinary clinic for pets, the unlikely home of a surprising young start-up, which is set to revolutionise one of the most common medical de...
Sep 27, 2017•27 min
The scientist running the Square Kilometre Array, the world's biggest telescope. Episode five of five. The telescope's antennae spiral across the African continent. In the remote North Karoo town of Carnarvon in South Africa, the next generation of astronomers is training to run this major telescope facility. (Photo: South Africa’s Karoo-based KAT-7 radio telescope array are pictured at sunset at The Square Kilometre Array. Credit: Alexander Joe/AFP)
Sep 20, 2017•27 min
Science writer and author Dava Sobell travels to Hawaii to ascend mount Mauna Kea. Among the observatories on the summit is the proposed Thirty Metre Telescope. Episode four of five. Dava discovers the plans are creating a rift between astronomers and local Hawaiians. TMT will be able to discern gases in the most remote atmospheres, which may indicate extra terrestrial life but the site is sacred for the native Hawaiian community. The story echoes the tension between science and faith that has p...
Sep 13, 2017•27 min
Dava Sobel travels to Edinburgh, to catch sight of the most ambitious telescope being made. Episode three of five. This time next year, the James Webb Space Telescope will begin its long journey to a stable orbit at a place called L-2, one million miles beyond the Moon. It will unfold the components of its huge, intricate body and look back in time, to probe events that occurred nearly 14 billion years ago. The James Webb is a Nasa-led project, with the telescope named after the Nasa administrat...
Sep 06, 2017•27 min
Dava Sobel hears from telescope operators at ALMA, the remote observatory high in the Atacama Desert in Chile, talking to us with their oxygen tanks at the ready. Episode two of five. As we hear, the ‘radio sky’ presents an alternate universe, in which the Moon and planets are barely detectable. In their place are clouds of interstellar gas and other exotic celestial sources which reveal different aspects of our history and astronomy. At ALMA, the radio astronomers do not need to wait until dark...
Aug 30, 2017•26 min
Dava Sobel uncovers the brilliance of her hero, the 16th century Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who revealed the true model of the universe by putting the Sun, rather than the Earth, at its hub. Episode one of five. In the Cathedral town of Frombork on the Baltic Sea in Northern Poland, we hear how he served his entire career in the church and how he kept his astronomical findings a secret, fearful of being denounced by the Catholic Church. On his deathbed, he published his life’s work, ...
Aug 23, 2017•27 min
The Crimean coast is so important that Russia seized it from Ukraine. But what have been the costs of gaining this valuable prize? The final leg of our five-episode journey across and around the Black Sea takes us to the port of Sevastopol. And we also reveal details about the next mini-series from The Compass. Producer Monica Whitlock. Photo: The embankment of Sevastopol, Crimea, Ukraine Credit: Getty Images
Aug 16, 2017•28 min
Ghost states like Abkhazia have the trappings of independence, but are unrecognised by most of the world. On the far north-east shore of the Black Sea, the region is determined to preserve its independence and ancient culture, including a pagan religion based around animal sacrifices, but the price of statehood is deep isolation. Presenter Tim Whewell discovers what life is like in Abkhazia. He begins his journey at the Abkhaz border and continues by horse-drawn wagon - the only available transp...
Aug 09, 2017•27 min
Black Sea truckers are a tough bunch. Driving thousands of miles through Europe, the Caucasus and eastwards to China, they transport everything from biscuits to fridges to pigs. Tim Whewell joins them on board the huge Black Sea ferry that connects these places, sailing from Odessa to Batumi in Georgia. The truckers are mainly from the former Soviet Union, many have known each other for years, and once all belonged to one country. The truckers are endlessly inventive as they navigate the fraught...
Aug 02, 2017•27 min
