Crossing Continents

Canada's First Nations communities are in crisis. Addiction to prescription pain-killers is rife, and it's devastating the fragile communities of northern Ontario. OxyContin - an opioid drug capable of inducing a high like heroin - is widely abused in Canada. But on isolated reserves, people talk of an epidemic. For Crossing Continents, Linda Pressly travels to Fort Hope - Eabametoong First Nation - to investigate the impact of drug use. Fort Hope is accessible only by air, apart from a six week window in winter when you can drive across the frozen lakes on ice roads. It has a population of just 1200 people, but it's estimated up to 80% of the working-age population are abusing OxyContin.The beauty of Fort Hope in deepest winter with its snow-covered streets conceals the fall-out from endemic drug use. This community has experienced a crime wave out of proportion to its size. Murder, theft and arson propelled the Chief to declare a 'state of emergency'. Even with police help it's hard to stop the pills getting onto the reserve. And the mark-up for the pushers - one 80mg tablet of OxyContin sells for up to $600 - means the addicts of Fort Hope are a lucrative market.There's a glimmer of optimism. Doris Slipperjack, a 23 year old mother of three, is fighting back. She's determined to beat her addiction. She's become an inspiration to many First Nations people. But the road ahead is tough. The aboriginal people of Canada have a troubled history of addiction. Alcohol, gasoline and glue sniffing, drugs - this is a community that has experienced it all. But people will tell you that OxyContin is the worst, because it is so highly addictive. Who knows if people like Dave Waswa - a talented artist, will ever be able to kick the habit.

Twenty years ago, the Kurdish region in Northern Iraq achieved effective autonomy after the first Gulf War, establishing a liberal constitution and a democratic assembly. The region is booming economically, thanks to its huge oil reserves. But things are not that simple on the ground. In February, there were protests in the city of Sulaimaniya against corruption and the dominance of the two parties which govern the region. The demonstration was violently suppressed, resulting in the deaths of several activists. Some Kurds believe that the generation of peshmerga guerillas who fought for autonomy in the 1980s and 1990s are now blocking more openness and democracy. Yet even critics concede that the Kurds have achieved far greater stability and security than the rest of Iraq. Gabriel Gatehouse asks if the Kurdish region should be a model for the rest of the Middle East to follow or avoid? Producer: Natalie Morton.

The Amazon rainforest is perhaps the world's greatest single environmental asset. For years the accepted wisdom has been that the remorseless tide of destruction there is unstoppable. Justin Rowlatt travels to Brazil to question this conventional account and finds that over the last five years rates of deforestation have plummeted by more than half. There is now serious and credible discussion about stopping deforestation completely and even replanting rainforest in deforested areas. He joins raids deep in the jungle with a team of armed Brazilian environment agents - and watches as a gang of loggers are caught in the act. He meets the farmers and ranchers who are now conserving rather than cutting the forest, including one of the world's biggest farmers, the man they call the King of Soya, Blairo Maggi. He meets an Indian tribe who have been enlisted as "smoke jumpers" - frontier firefighters protecting the forest from wild fires.He travels to the most remote state in Brazil to see a project which has created a viable market for the traditional industry of wild rubber tapping by building a condom factory in the middle of the jungle.Of course there is still enormous pressure on the forest. 2011 saw a spike in deforestation and a big debate about the management of the forest which has shown the continued power of the rural lobby. While Brazil's success in taming deforestation remains fragile Justin asks if there is cause for hope that the greatest ecosystem on the planet can be preserved. Producer: Keith Morris.

Sir Ernest Shackleton has a heroic place in the annals of Antarctic exploration, famously for his expedition on the aptly-named Endurance in 1914. He intended to cross over the Antarctic landmass. Instead, his ship became stuck in ice which eventually crushed it. Shackleton and his crew made a desperate voyage in three small boats to Elephant Island, where they split up. The men on the island were left under the command of Shackleton's Number 2, Frank Wild. Shackleton and a small team sailed 800 miles to South Georgia, from where they mounted a rescue mission for Wild's group. Nearly a century on, reporter Karen Bowerman joins a group of Wild's relatives retracing his extraordinary journey to the southern seas. They are bearing Wild's ashes, which they bury next to Shackleton, on South Georgia. Producer: John Murphy.

Jill McGivering, the BBC World Service South Asia editor, investigates the discovery of thousands of bodies in mass graves in Indian Kashmir. Human rights groups suspect they are just some of the victims of "disappearances" at the hands of the Indian military in this contested region. The authorities respond that the bodies are in fact those of militants who have infiltrated from Pakistan. Will an official investigation reveal the truth? Producer: Michael Gallagher.

The world economy has pinned its hopes on China's economy, which depends on over 150 million migrant workers and their labour. The system of internal migration, based on the idea that workers do not settle in the places they work, has sustained an economic miracle and rapid development. But the country has seen a summer of unrest, with rioting among migrants in the Pearl River Delta and angry reactions to the injustices of the system. Mukul Devichand visits Guangzhou, the southern metropolis where 7 million migrants form half the population. There is anger and frustration with the hukou, China's "internal passport." Meanwhile, the city is now also home to communities from around the world, with 100,000 Africans adding to the already sensitive ethnic mix. How will the city change under the pressure of migration, and will its economic success survive the social tensions?

Ed Butler reports on a cycle of abuse in the orphanages of Bali. Some seventy orphanages now populate the island, housing thousands of children, many recruited from poor families, on the promise of a decent diet, education, and healthcare. But in some cases the promises are empty, as unscrupulous owners abuse and exploit the children - using them for free labour over long hours, and forcing them to beg. The most lucrative profits come from well-meaning tourists, who are often convinced by the tough living conditions to give generously - the hope being the money will benefit the children, not the owner. Is such charity actually intensifying the misery of Bali's most vulnerable children?

In 2000, President Robert Mugabe introduced "fast-track land reform" to Zimbabwe in a wave of often violent takeovers of mainly white-owned farms.Led by veterans of the second Chimurenga - the Zimbabwe War of Liberation of the 1960s and 1970s - the takeover was seen internationally as a disaster. It was widely reported that cronyism and corruption meant only the country's politically-connected elite were benefiting from the land reform programme, and in the process were leading Zimbabwe's lucrative agricultural export industry into freefall. But what is the situation a decade on? Martin Plaut travels across Zimbabwe to investigate new research which suggests that farm production levels are recovering. He meets some of Zimbabwe's new black farmers - some of whom took part in the land seizures - who reveal how land reform has transformed their lives. He also examines the fortunes of Zimbabwe's remaining white farmers and the black farm workers they employed and asks if country's wider economy has recovered from the massive disruption caused by land reform. Reporter: Martin Plaut Producer: Richard Fenton-Smith.

The main focus of the violence in the North Caucasus these days is in Dagestan, Chechnya's neighbour. Shoot-outs between police and Islamist militants occur almost daily, and suicide bombings and assassinations have become common. In response, the authorities use what many see as excessive force and the violence spirals still further. In the past two years suicide bombings in the Moscow metro and a Moscow airport have been traced to the region. In Dagestan it's a war that has touched almost every community and family, and one where differences between the opposing sides are apparently irreconcilable. For the authorities, Dagestan is part of Russia and subject to its secular laws; for the militants the region should be a sharia state independent of Moscow.After ten years trying to combat the militants and their appeal, Russian businessman Suleiman Kerimov has hit on a new idea - football. Sports facilities and pitches are being built across this impoverished and deeply conservative Muslim republic, encouraging young boys and men to play on the pitch rather than join the militants in the forest, and girls to watch them instead of withdrawing behind the veil. Dagestan's top club Anzhi Makhachkala has been bought up by the pro-Kremlin Dagestani billionaire and now he is buying world-class footballers, including Samuel Eto'o, currently the highest-paid player on the planet.Lucy Ash asks whether this is just bread and circuses for the masses or whether it is making a real difference in this restive Russian republic. Mr Kerimov is bankrolling many other projects from mosque building to job creation, from a glass factory to a glistening vision of an entirely new city. The reclusive billionaire's representative in Dagestan says he is trying to find an economic solution to one of the poorest and most troubled regions in Russia. The government is also trying a new tactic; it has recently set up a commission to persuade young fighters to lay down their arms and return to a peaceful civilian life. Lucy watches an anti-terrorism policeman lecturing university students in the capital, Makhachkala, on the dangers of radical Islam.But with entrenched corruption, heavy-handed policing and a blatant disregard for law, the Islamic underground shows little sign of retreat. More alarmingly, it looks as if the insurgency is spreading from the north to the traditionally peaceful and secular south of the republic. Lucy visits the village of Sovetskoye where in May this year police beat up dozens of young Salafists. A few months later the head teacher was murdered, allegedly because he'd banned the hijab in class. Can a massive injection of cash really neuter deep-seated pressures for change?

Rupa Jha investigates how local-level campaigners against corruption in India face threats and violence - despite promises that the government will stamp out graft. She tells the stories of two whistleblowers in two different states who faced ferocious intimidation after they tried to challenge powerful individuals on the take. Producer: Ed Butler.