東アジアにおける域内為替レート管理と貿易の域内統合に関する論考

公共政策プログラム / Public Policy Program政策研究大学院大学 / National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies論文審査委員: Kaliappa Kalirajan, 大来 洋一, 大山 達雄, 福島 隆司, James R. Rhodes, バク･サンジュン（早稲田大学国際教養学部

SANITATION INTERVENTIONS IN THE URBAN INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS OF BANGLADESH: THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT, NGOs AND THE GRASSROOTS

The Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, is the world’s fastest growing primate city, having nearly 15 million people and approximately 6 million living in slum areas. Their high population density and growth rates, coupled with inadequate and inappropriate water and sanitation (WatSan) facilities, are creating social, economic and environmental effects. Until recently, several attempts have been made to provide infrastructure services to those slums. But the extent of the services is unsatisfactory due to resource constraints and a burdensome concentration of slums that contaminates the city ecology on a broad-spectrum. In consequence, the trend of development ventures through government (GO) and non-government organizations (NGO) is not only disappointing but also questionable due to disastrous project histories. The complex social dynamics of these informal settlements, together with inappropriate or inadequate WatSan facilities and incompetent governance systems obstruct the pace of sanitation interventions. Apart from this, Bangladesh has succumbed to political indiscretion and bureaucratic intemperance which have severely diminished the capacity of the GOs and NGOs to perform at a reasonable level. The result is all round deterioration in the quality and adequacy of the urban basic services and people of the informal settlements are the worst sufferers. It is widely recognized that the poor communities mostly have no proven demand for improved sanitation facilities, as their basic priority, rather, is managing their next meal. In this situation, some NGOs have come forward with their ‘flexible’ and ‘tailor-made’ working strategies developed from previous project experiences whereas government agencies are more geared to ‘facilitation’ and continue with their ‘supply-driven' strategy, ignoring criticisms and pitfalls. As one of the most dysfunctional sectors in Bangladesh, urban sanitation is traumatized and its coverage is affected by several interconnecting factors while the government continues to bypass questions related to slum improvement arguing that the slums are illegal settlements and do not qualify for government services. Several NGOs have come forward to work in the urban sanitation sector and in most instances, the poor slum-dwellers have appreciated the NGOs’ participatory working strategies. In fact the dynamics of the ‘social-technological-governance’ system of the slum areas often determines the success of sanitation interventions. In this research, the vibrant dynamics of ‘social-technological-governance’ systems and the roles of GO-NGO service providers and beneficiaries in the selected slums are critically analysed through a qualitative methodology and a bottom-up approach that has the potential to identify inherent policy weaknesses and factors that facilitate or hinder the successful implementation of sanitation programmes. This research is entirely based on empirical evidences and the qualitative assessment of field data that were collected from five informal settlements of Dhaka city and associated GO-NGO sources. The outcome of this research suggests that the impacting factors are not equally weighted in WatSan projects as some could be defined as crucial and influencing factors that shape other interrelated factors. In order to smoothen the pathways of different WatSan projects it is necessary to carefully identify and restrict those problem-breeding factors on a priority basis. This research also describes different stakeholders’ practices and links with existing policies to identify the gaps between them. Here, the proposals are made for reality-based, short-term and long-term solutions and policy recommendations that might offer guidelines for addressing the overwhelming slum sanitation agenda in urban Bangladesh

Contemporary Analysis and Progression of Fashion Industry: The Instance of Bangladesh History

The study expresses fast fashion globally whereas Bangladesh consume more than 80 billion pieces of clothing each year, many of them hyper-trendy, low-cost items that move from runway to sale rack at breakneck speed. Fashion is a trillion-dollar-a-year industry that increasingly relies on rock-bottom retail prices. The amount of made-in-Bangladesh clothing worn by abroad has plummeted over the past 35 years. The study also scrutinizes about clothing companies which are now outsource much of their manufacturing to factories in developing countries to keep prices low and trend-turnover high. Starting from scratch, Bangladesh has come a long way and is now one of 10 new emerging countries in the world based on Fashion Progression. The macroeconomic stability, 6% annual average GDP growth, robust performance of remittance and export, strong foreign currency reserve, and remarkable social and human development over the past decade – all reflect our underlying strengths. Given the dominance of the RMG industry in the overall economy of Bangladesh, have to protect this sector. Rather than basking in the glory, should work hand in hand to retain sustainable growth and competitive edge of this Fashion Industry. Keywords: Fashion Industry, Fashion, RMG, Historical Progression, Export Fashion, Market and so o

The Covid-19 Pandemic: Vulnerability of Migrant workers in the GCC States

The six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates) contain some of the highest numbers of migrants of any country in the world. Estimated at as many as 28 million, the migrants living in the region remit roughly US$ 110 billion to their home countries annually. As the global Covid19 crisis unfolds, the GCC countries face an unprecedent challenge of containing the spread of the disease among nationals and residents in the region. Since the movement of people is a primary driver of virus spread, the GCC states have imposed measures to restrict such movement, including lockdown. The idea is to ensure social distancing so as to avoid person-toperson infection. However, migrants in Gulf countries live primarily in labour camps or crowded dormitories which are hotspots for Coronavirus spread. Migrants are therefore highly exposed to the Covid-19 pandemic

The rhetorical blue economy in Bangladesh: Analyzing the inborn regulatory bottlenecks

This study's overreaching objective was to assess the suitability and applicability of the existing legal and institutional framework for managing the coastal and marine resources in Bangladesh. Together with, the fundamental challenges faced by the artisanal and small-scale fishers in Bangladesh were critically scrutinized. The study revealed that the regulatory framework in Bangladesh is characterized by jurisdictional overlapping followed by the conflict of interests among the public institutes, which originated from the aged and fragmented laws and ambiguous business allocation; consequently, the artisanal and small-scale fishers suffer a lot. The local government and community's right to resource management remains fuzzy. Bangladesh can enact new sectoral laws followed by business reallocation for the line ministries. The study will help policymakers identify the bottlenecks rooted in the existing regulatory and institutional framework.Keywords: Coastal and Marine Resource; Jurisdictional Overlapping; Conflict of Interests; Marine Governance; Artisanal Fisher

Development of A Knowledge•Based Compliance Auditing System for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Projects in Malaysia

Environmental Management Program (EMP) constitute an important component of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report of the development projects where the environmental monitoring programs and the environmental compliance auditing (ECA) aspects should be described in detail. ECA requires systematic selection of monitoring variables and analysis of the monitoring database and also requires that a uniform quality standard in auditing be maintained for different types of development projects and different stages of their development. ECA should produce an audit report that is easy to understand and could be used under taking mitigation measures. Presently, in Malaysia, for the EIA projects, there is neither any specific guideline for conducting compliance auditing nor any systematic management of the data generated through monitoring of the projects. The main objective of this study is to develop a knowledge-based environmental compliance auditing system (called ECA-KB) that uses expert's knowledge from different environmental fields and a quantitative technique of evaluating the environmental compliance level of a particular project. ECA-KB comprises of three components namely monitoring database system, compliance auditing model, and knowledge base system. These three component systems have been integrated together to produce concise and comprehensive environmental compliance audit report for the EIA projects. The study provides a tool for the decision-makers and the stakeholders namely the project proponents, environmental consultants, and Department of Environment (DOE) to monitor, evaluate environmental compliance level of the projects, generate compliance audit report, and to keep track on the compliance trend. The great potentiality of the developed ECA-KB is that it is produced in easy interactive and simplified manner that can be run as desktop applications by both the experts and the non-expert users. The system is available in install able CD's and can be reached to the potential users by several ways including distribution of CD's through market channel, demonstration in the seminars, and symposium

Connected and Autonomous Vehicles Applications Development and Evaluation for Transportation Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) seamlessly integrate computation, networking and physical devices. A Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) system in which each vehicle can wirelessly communicate and share data with other vehicles or infrastructures (e.g., traffic signal, roadside unit), requires a Transportation Cyber-Physical System (TCPS) for improving safety and mobility, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, a typical TCPS with a centralized computing service cannot support real-time CAV applications due to the often unpredictable network latency, high data loss rate and expensive communication bandwidth, especially in a mobile network, such as a CAV environment. Edge computing, a new concept for the CPS, distributes the resources for communication, computation, control, and storage at different edges of the systems. TCPS with edge computing strategy forms an edge-centric TCPS. This edge-centric TCPS system can reduce data loss and data delivery delay, and fulfill the high bandwidth requirements. Within the edge-centric TCPS, Vehicle-to-X (V2X) communication, along with the in-vehicle sensors, provides a 360-degree view for CAVs that enables autonomous vehicles’ operation beyond the sensor range. The addition of wireless connectivity would improve the operational efficiency of CAVs by providing real-time roadway information, such as traffic signal phasing and timing information, downstream traffic incident alerts, and predicting future traffic queue information. In addition, temporal variation of roadway traffic can be captured by sharing Basic Safety Messages (BSMs) from each vehicle through the communication between vehicles as well as with roadside infrastructures (e.g., traffic signal, roadside unit) and traffic management centers. In the early days of CAVs, data will be collected only from a limited number of CAVs due to a low CAV penetration rate and not from other non-connected vehicles. This will result in noise in the traffic data because of low penetration rate of CAVs. This lack of data combined with the data loss rate in the wireless CAV environment makes it challenging to predict traffic behavior, which is dynamic over time. To address this challenge, it is important to develop and evaluate a machine learning technique to capture stochastic variation in traffic patterns over time. This dissertation focuses on the development and evaluation of various connected and autonomous vehicles applications in an edge-centric TCPS. It includes adaptive queue prediction, traffic data prediction, dynamic routing and Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) applications. An adaptive queue prediction algorithm is described in Chapter 2 for predicting real-time traffic queue status in an edge-centric TCPS. Chapter 3 presents noise reduction models to reduce the noise from the traffic data generated from the BSMs at different penetration of CAVs and evaluate the performance of the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) prediction model for predicting traffic data using the resulting filtered data set. The development and evaluation of a dynamic routing application in a CV environment is detailed in Chapter 4 to reduce incident recovery time and increase safety on a freeway. The development of an evaluation framework is detailed in Chapter 5 to evaluate car-following models for CACC controller design in terms of vehicle dynamics and string stability to ensure user acceptance is detailed in Chapter 5. Innovative methods presented in this dissertation were proven to be providing positive improvements in transportation mobility. These research will lead to the real-world deployment of these applications in an edge-centric TCPS as the dissertation focuses on the edge-centric TCPS deployment strategy. In addition, as multiple CAV applications as presented in this dissertation can be supported simultaneously by the same TCPS, public investments will only include infrastructure investments, such as investments in roadside infrastructure and back-end computing infrastructure. These connected and autonomous vehicle applications can potentially provide significant economic benefits compared to its cost

Sovereignty in Islamist Political Thought: Continuity and Change

Sovereignty is a contested issue in Islamist political thought. Although Islamists practically accepted liberal democracy in various forms across the world, they are yet to solve the normative paradox: how to reconcile Islam’s divine sovereignty to nation-state’s popular sovereignty. Normatively, Islamists advocating the divine sovereignty reject any human-constructed system that intervenes in the divine order and distorts God’s divine design. Some Islamists, however, attempt to move away from this interpretation of absolute sovereignty of God and consequently reinterpret Islamic thoughts and practices in a manner that is compatible with the ethos of liberal democracy. This study examines this shifting concept of sovereignty in Sunni Islamist political thought, particularly the transformation from the divine sovereignty to the sovereignty of ummah. Analyzing the theoretical underpinnings of divine sovereignty propagated by Abul A’la Mawdudi and Sayyid Qutb, on the one hand, and Islamist sovereignty propagated by Rachid Ghannouchi, on the other, the thesis discusses the continuity in modern Islamist thoughts on sovereignty and emergent changes. It demonstrates how Mawdudi and Qutb utilizing the Quranic concept tawhid, the oneness of God, argue that not only the religious authority but all temporal-political authorities are exclusively bestowed to God. The thesis further argues that Ghannouchi’s argument for the sovereignty of ummah (community/people) is based on metaphysical understanding of Islam and siyasa shariiyya tradition of Islamic governance. Ghannouchi insists that people own political-temporal authority while keeping God’s ultimate sovereignty sacred. The thesis, situating the transforming thoughts of Islamist sovereignty vis-à-vis the popular sovereignty, contends that this shift can have a significant normative contribution to the understanding of Islamist thought on democracy

Search Rank Fraud Prevention in Online Systems

The survival of products in online services such as Google Play, Yelp, Facebook and Amazon, is contingent on their search rank. This, along with the social impact of such services, has also turned them into a lucrative medium for fraudulently influencing public opinion. Motivated by the need to aggressively promote products, communities that specialize in social network fraud (e.g., fake opinions and reviews, likes, followers, app installs) have emerged, to create a black market for fraudulent search optimization. Fraudulent product developers exploit these communities to hire teams of workers willing and able to commit fraud collectively, emulating realistic, spontaneous activities from unrelated people. We call this behavior “search rank fraud”. In this dissertation, we argue that fraud needs to be proactively discouraged and prevented, instead of only reactively detected and filtered. We introduce two novel approaches to discourage search rank fraud in online systems. First, we detect fraud in real-time, when it is posted, and impose resource consuming penalties on the devices that post activities. We introduce and leverage several novel concepts that include (i) stateless, verifiable computational puzzles that impose minimal performance overhead, but enable the efficient verification of their authenticity, (ii) a real-time, graph based solution to assign fraud scores to user activities, and (iii) mechanisms to dynamically adjust puzzle difficulty levels based on fraud scores and the computational capabilities of devices. In a second approach, we introduce the problem of fraud de-anonymization: reveal the crowdsourcing site accounts of the people who post large amounts of fraud, thus their bank accounts, and provide compelling evidence of fraud to the users of products that they promote. We investigate the ability of our solutions to ensure that fraud does not pay off

Characterizing freshwater macroinvertebrates of Bangladesh using metagenetic techniques

The degradation of freshwater ecosystems has become a global concern, in particular, the critical conditions of rivers in Bangladesh demand a monitoring programme through the assessment of bioindicator organisms. Macroinvertebrates as prominent bioindicators are widely used for assessing the health of aquatic ecosystems. Recent technological advances have enabled routine assessment with the genomic characterization of macroinvertebrates using different metagenetic techniques such as DNA barcoding for individual specimen identification, metabarcoding for multi-species identification of bulk samples and mitochondrial metagenomics for extraction of mitogenomes from mixed samples. In this thesis, I commence by generating Cytochrome Oxidase subunit (COI) barcodes for Bangladeshi freshwater macroinvertebrates belonging to the Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, Trichoptera, Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Odonata, Diptera, Gastropoda and Bivalvia. These barcodes can be used as a DNA reference library for species identification in metabarcoding of macroinvertebrates. I also aim for exploring complete mitogenomes from selected macroinvertebrates using a mitochondrial metagenomic pipeline. I carry out phylogenetic analysis with protein-coding genes that reveals the evolutionary relationship of Bangladeshi macroinvertebrate lineages and also support deeper level identification of barcodes placing them into the phylogenetic tree (chapter 2). In chapter 3, I assess some methodological aspects of the metabarcoding pipeline required for diversity estimation from complex bulk samples of macroinvertebrates in large-scale biomonitoring programmes. These include preparation of bulk macroinvertebrate samples, optimization of the procedure of homogenization of samples required for DNA extraction, strategies for DNA pooling from these extracts, choice of robust universal primers, and viable OTU clustering for reliable diversity estimation. The results have implications for the optimization and standardization of these steps in metabarcoding of freshwater macroinvertebrates. In chapter 4, I apply the metabarcoding technique to establish the macroinvertebrate diversity and impact of various types of anthropogenic disturbances on the freshwater macroinvertebrates in highland and lowland rivers. The results document high diversity, local endemicity and pronounced responses to disturbance in largely unexplored but threatened habitats of Bangladesh. My investigations manifest the viability of metagenetic techniques for applied conservation management as a step towards building a biomonitoring system in freshwater ecosystems globally.Open Acces