|
|
News
2005
|
|
December
10, 2005
Promoting
the Private Sector by Improving Access to Land
Land
markets that allow access to land—and to
buildings—through secure property rights, at
transparent prices, and with efficient permitting
processes and land tax systems are essential to a good
business environment. Creating such markets, however,
can be a long, complex, politically charged process
especially where most land is untitled and where there
are conflicting claims. But experience points to
practical interim or step solutions that can have a
positive impact and generate the political capital to
reform the overall land market system.
Source:
World
Bank (foreign investment advisory service). Read
the full briefing note (48kb pdf file)
|
|
November
6, 2005
AusAid
Continues to Support Land Administration in the
Developing World
The
Australian Government recently announced funding of A$34
million to assist the Philippine Government in
continuing improvements to its land administration
system over the coming years. This funding will support
the second phase of the Land Administration and
Management Project. It builds on the success of first
phase of the project which has already made significant
improvements in reforming policy and property valuation
standards, improving land records management, and
increasing title security for landowners.
Efforts
to reduce poverty and support economic growth in the
Philippines are currently held back by an overly complex
and ineffective land administration system. Without
clear land title and ownership rights, enterprising
landowners cannot get the finance they need to start a
business as they are unable to use their property as
collateral.
The
World Bank's Doing Business report of 2005 has shown
that heavy regulation and weak property rights exclude
the poor from doing business.
Increasing
the amount of land covered by land title and improving
bureaucratic processes has the potential to unlock
development, stimulate business and improve the social
and economic lives of millions in the Philippines.
Source:
AusAid
|
|
October
27, 2005
Millennium
Challenge Corporation supports Land Registration in Lesotho
The
Government of the Kingdom of Lesotho, a small
land-locked country in Southern Africa, is seeking
expressions of interest from consulting companies to
review and design a land information system and land
registration system. In the context of on-going land
tenure reform projects in Lesotho, the consultants are
expected to evaluate current land administration
processes and systems and make recommendations regarding
how to enable land institutions, local authorities and
communities to adopt the best procedures for recording
land rights and providing land information services.
Lesotho currently has a deeds registration based on the
South African model.
Source:
Government
of the Kingdom of Lesotho
|
|
October
16, 2005
Is
Registration of Title to Land in the Caribbean Failing?
An
'advertorial' appearing in the in-flight magazine
of LIAT, the Caribbean regional airline, seems to
suggest so. Entitled "buying real estate in the
Caribbean", it recommends "obtaining a
property title guaranty from a title guaranty company to
protect against recording errors, fraud", etc. The
author is the regional manager of Stewart Title Eastern
Caribbean, a subsidiary of the largest title insurance
company in the United States of America. The ad fails to
mention, however, that most islands in the eastern
Caribbean have title registration systems, which offer
an in-built guarantee and indemnity assurance against
error and fraud. These islands include Antigua, Saint
Lucia, and BVI; only Grenada, in the English-speaking
eastern Caribbean has no title registration in place. In
defense of Stewart title, their market is buyers from
the USA, who are more familiar with the deeds recording
and title insurance that operates at home, and who may
want a 'full-service realtor' also known to them when
buying in an unfamiliar place. Locals though, know
better; they have the benefit of a modern efficient and
guaranteed land registration system that is reasonably
priced and resilient.
Source:
LIAT.
Links: Stewart
Title
|
|
September
27, 2005
The
Perils of Property in Post-Conflict Places
Mediterranean
property has always attracted northern Europeans; but
should they buy in Cyprus? Yes, but not in the Turkish
controlled north, according to a recent article
published in the Spectator magazine, where the result
"could easily become a nightmare of title disputes
and lawsuits." In April 2005 the appeal court in
Cyprus upheld a decision that a British couple should
demolish the house they had built for their retirement
illegally on Greek Cypriot property in the North, and
pay damages to the rightful owners - even though the
'owners' had not been able to use it since the Turkish
invasion of 1974 - and now that Cyprus is in the EU,
this decision can be enforced through the UK courts. The
reason - and also the reason why they rejected the
'Annan' plan for reunification - is that Greek Cypriots
remain the 'legal' owners of 90% of the property in the
North. "The Land Registry, which the British
colonial government set up, has recorded every inch of
the island for nearly a century. And although the Turks
have held the North for 31 years now, and are developing
and selling property, Greek Cypriot owners and their
descendants, frankly and with legal justification, view
foreign buying of Greek property as dealing in stolen
goods." There is only one way to be safe buying in
the North, and that is to find a property that belonged
to Turkish Cypriots (or foreigners) before 1974. It
should be free of problems about title, but the price
will be higher for that very reason. Source: The
Spectator.
|
|
September
26, 2005
id21
- Focus on: Land Reform
The
weekly newsletter of the Institute
of Development Studies highlights 5 research reports
on land reform in Sub-Saharan Africa. Recognising that
land is a major asset for most people, land policies are
needed to find the most effective ways of guaranteeing
land access and ownership for the poor. These reports
contribute to the debate: Connecting economies: agrarian
reform and rural poverty in South Africa; Understanding
the impact of changing land ownership in Kenya; The
right kind of land reform: lessons from South Africa;
How
do pastoralists cope with increasing pressure on land?
Management of rangeland resources in areas of climatic
variability. Source: www.id21.org
|
|
September
11, 2005
Revisiting
Property in the United States of America
Three
articles in a recent edition of The
Economist newspaper about land and property rights
have lessons for the developing world. The first article
"hands off our homes" is about the fall out
from the Supreme Court decision in the Kelo v. New
London case. "From coke to cubists" is the
title of the second article, which concerns property
development, ballooning prices and speculation in Miami.
The last, called "home on the range", notes
the increasing conflict between oil companies and
private owners about mineral rights in the Rocky
Mountain Region.
|
|
|
|
September
1, 2005
Who
owns this island?
Keeping
track of who owns land is a difficult job for any
country, and especially for one divided into 700 islands
and keys scattered over 100,000 square miles.
The
IDB is assisting the Bahamas with a US$3.5 million loan,
which by the end of a three-year project, information on
the value, ownership and location of 75 percent of all
land parcels in New Providence and Grand Bahama
islands—the two most populous islands of the
archipelago—will have been collected and stored
electronically. Document recording time at the Deeds
Registry will be reduced from an average of nine to two
months, and tax registration and collection will have
substantially increased. However, private parties will
still be able to buy and sell land without registering a
deed, and lawyers will still be unable to give 100%
assurance that any title is a good and clear one; the
complexities, and disputes, will remain until more
substantial reform is embarked upon--the introduction of
registration of title perhaps?. So who owns this island?
Who knows.
Source:
IDB
America magazine More about the Bahamas
project here
|
|
August
22, 2005
Developing
Land for Agriculture
An
example of the mechanism for improving access to, and
securing the tenure of, land for agricultural
development can be found in a new contract being tendered
by DFID. A multi-donor fund for community land use in
Mozambique is being established that will provide grants
to communities and small farmers to exploit an abundance
of unoccupied arable land. Grants will be provided to
assist negotiation and registration of land rights.
Source:
DFID
Terms of reference: download
(38kb pdf)
|
|
August
15, 2005
Agriculture,
land and development
Poverty
reduction particularly in sub-Saharan Africa hinges on
increasing agricultural production. This is view of the
Department for International Development who have
recently published their draft policy paper on the role
of agriculture for development. One of the priorities
identified by DFID is improving access to and securing
the tenure of land rights. Apart from outright
ownership, there are a variety of other ways in which
poor farmers can increase their access to land,
including leasing or sharecropping arrangement, and
there is growing evidence that these systems can be both
efficient and equitable. Formal recognition of rights
needs to be complemented by action that empowers
communities to exercise these rights. Furthermore,
regulation must ensure that formal land titling does not
result in the poor being excluded from common lands.
Source:
Department
for International Development. Read
the draft report (306kb word doc)
|
|
|
|
August
3, 2005
Property:
prosperity or poverty?
Private
ownership of property, many would argue, leads to
prosperity. This is a oversimplified construct
that is not always backed by economic theory. Security
of tenure, access to land and livelihoods from land, and
equality in land distribution all seem to encourage
economic growth that may lead to poverty reduction in
the developing world. Private ownership per se is
not the determining factor. In fact, private ownership
may lead to poverty, as a recent study, reported by the
BBC, finds that many first-time homebuyers in the UK are
living in poverty. According to official government
statistics nearly 6 out of 10 people defined as in
poverty are homeowners. In this instance being in
poverty is defined by social scientists and the
government as earning below 60% of average incomes. The
financial strain of buying their first home leaves many
first-time buyers with little disposable income.
Source:
BBC
See also: Land
policies for growth and poverty reduction and the
socio-economic benefits of good land administration
|
|
July
23, 2005
UN
Condemns Zimbabwe
Forced Evictions
A
major UN report on a fact-finding mission has called for
an immediate end to Zimbabwe's slum clearance programme,
declaring it to be in violation of international and
national law. "Operation 'Murambatsvina' (Restore
Order), while purporting to target illegal dwellings and
structures and to clamp down on alleged illicit
activities, was carried out in an indiscriminate and
unjustified manner, with indifference to human
suffering", said the report, which documents the
background and socio-political and economic
circumstances leading up to the forced evictions of an
estimated 700,000 people. For the future, the report
recommends, amongst other things, a pro-poor policy
framework that provides security of tenure and
affordable housing, and more immediately to compensate
those who lost both real and personal property during
the evictions.
Source:
BBC.
Download the full
report (pdf 1.6mb) from the UN
Human Settlements Programme website.
|
|
July
18, 2005
Land
Conflict in the News
'Old
news' perhaps; definitely not so prominent in the
popular press; but, land conflicts are still reported
especially when they arise in less likely quarters. The
first of two stories comes from the BBC
with a report on land invasions in Kenya, not of land
acquired by colonial settlers, but of land acquired more
recently by the government. The second story comes from
China and reported in the Economist
newspaper describing the tension between peasants and
rural officials, rooted in unclear property rights and
growing with urban and industrial development.
|
|
|
|
July
5, 2005
Pro-poor
Growth in the
1990s:
Lessons
and Insights from 14 Countries: is the title of a new
report jointly prepared by donors and NGOs
that examines how economic growth can best
benefit the poor. The study demonstrates the strong link
between overall economic growth and the speed of poverty
reduction, but stressed that greater reduction was
observed where policies were in place to enhance the
capacity of poor people to participate in growth. One
example given is the strengthening of institutions that
help to deliver land titles that build on customary
tenure systems. > Access
the full report from DFID
|
|
June
27, 2005
US
Supreme Court Backs Compulsory Acquisition for
Development Purposes
In
a 5:4 majority decision the United States Supreme Court
upheld the ruling of the Supreme Court of Connecticut
that the State may compulsory acquire private
property for public purposes where the intended use of
the land is not for the general public but for private
development but the development is intended for the
greater public good. The grounds for the appeal, in the
case Susette Kelo, et al, (petitioners) v.
City of New London, Connecticut, et al, was that
the acquisition was contrary to the 'Takings' clause of
the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution. The majority
held that just as the State had the right to acquire
land for building public amenities such as roads and
bridges, the State had the right to compulsory acquire
land for private developers if the outcome of the
development also serves a general public good.
"Promoting economic development is a traditional
and long accepted governmental function, and there is no
principled way of distinguishing it from other public
purposes the court has recognised", said Justice
Stevens. He added a caveat, however, that the City could
not, of course, acquire private property and give it to
another private owner strictly for the latter's benefit.
In a dissenting opinion Justice O'Connor said the
majority had created an ominous precedent: "The
specter of condemnation hangs over all property",
she wrote. "Nothing is to prevent the state
replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz Carlton, any home with
a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."
Source:
Trinidad Guardian, June 24, 2005.
Click
here
to download and read the whole judgment by the US
Supreme Court.
Click
here
to visit the Supreme Court web site
|
|
June
24, 2005
Nicaragua's
Indians get title to ancestral lands
Perseverance
has paid off for the Miskito Indians in their quest to
obtain legal title to their ancestral lands. The
President of Nicaragua recently handed over title
documents for five large tracts of land totaling 8000
square kilometres. In keeping with tradition the
land will remain communally owned but each family will
be assigned a homestead plot. The quest began in earnest
after outsiders began invading the land for logging and
farming. A landmark Court case ruled in their favour,
and now with the authority of legal title they hope to
turn the tide on illegal logging and clearing.
Source:
Associated press news article
|
|
June
16, 2005
Weighing
the options in Tamil Nadu
The
World Bank's US$465 million Emergency Tsunami
Reconstruction Project will, as reconstruction
progresses, provide people who lost their homes in the
Indian state of Tamil Nadu access to new, earthquake and
cyclone-resistant housing at a safe distance from shore.
Before reconstruction can begin, however, several
critical issues must be addressed, such as formal
ownership of land, the need to be near the water for
fishing, and how to coordinate efforts of local
communities and civil society groups, with the
government acting as facilitator. > Click here
to read the World Bank news
|
|
June
26, 2005
A
New
Perspective on South African Land Reform
Is
South Africa's land reform policy ‘rural
romanticism’? This is the claim of a new study
published by the Johannesburg-based Centre for
Development and Enterprise. Their research finds that
most black South Africans do not want to farm, but want
jobs, houses, and effective services in the urban areas
instead. This should not be surprising if you consider
the history and climate of South Africa; land yes, but
farming as a full-time livelihood, more often not.
Unsurprising too is some of the reaction to the report;
one NGO describing it as "exciting former apartheid
planners who believed that farming was not for
Africans” whilst a Land affairs ministry spokesperson
called the CDE research “a simplistic approach” to
assume that all black people in rural areas want to come
into urban areas. A more thoughtful reaction argues
that, whilst the findings of the report deserve debate,
the solution lies in creating a more enabling economic
environment for small farmers. Prof Cousins of the
Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies argues that
"proposals [for] land reform [to] be urbanised,
marketised, individualised, monetised and modernised are
mostly inappropriate" and, instead, the government
should focus on reforms which "include support for
subsistence production, multiple livelihoods,
community-based initiatives and democratic systems of
communal tenure".> Read more
about the report on the ELDIS
website, download
the full report from CDE's website.
|
|
June
19, 2995
Alternative
Dispute Resolution
Good
land administration, and especially effective land
titling or adjudication, necessitates expeditious and
equitable dispute resolution. Conventionally, and as
often exists in many developing countries still burdened
by colonial legacies, the resolution of land disputes is
through the established judicial system. An example of
an alternative approach, using traditional community
based fora, comes from Afghanistan. > Source: Emerging
Markets Group
|
|
June
3, 2005
Tsunami
Recovery
A
multi-donor trust fund has been set up to assist in the
recovery of tsunami-affected people of Aceh and Nias in
Indonesia. The trust fund amounts to US$500
million provided by the EC, World Bank, ADB and
many other bilateral donors, and includes a
component of US$28 million specifically for the recovery
of property rights. This project will help to sort out
land ownership through urgent recovery of land records,
establishment of a land occupancy databases and
rehabilitation of the land administration system
throughout Aceh (up to 300,000 parcels of land). Source World
Bank
|
|
May
20, 2005
The
Urban Half of the World
Half
of all humanity is soon to be living in cities according
to a prediction by the United Nations. Driven by the
rapid rural-urban migration in the developing world, the
trend will put increasing strain on resources and
services include the demand for serviced and secure
land, shelter and tenure. In 1900 only 14% of the
world's population lived in cities; today it is over 3
billion. This dramatic growth, and the failure of
development to keep pace, is evident from the fact that
1 billion people, or one sixth of humanity, live in
shanty towns, typically with insecure tenure and
ill-defined property rights. Source: BBC
News. Links:United
Nations Habitat
|
|
May
13, 2005
Land
in Africa 2
A
South African farmer whose property was invaded by
40,000 people has been awarded compensation by the
Constitutional Court. Disregarding farmer's land rights
was a "recipe for disaster", so said Chief
Justice Pius Langa. This case has been seen as a wider
test case for established land rights in South Africa.
Source: BBC
News
|
|
May
13, 2005
The
New Tragedy of the Commons. The enclosures are
coming as the rich grab land that poor people have
farmed for centuries. By Camilla Toulmin
''How can I protect my land rights?" is the
question being asked in the cocoa groves of Ghana, the
highlands of Ethiopia and the pasturelands of Tanzania.
Across the continent, a land grab is under way.
Governments take small farmers' land to create
enterprise zones. Customary chiefs reap fortunes from
urban sprawl by getting rid of "tenants" to
make way for residential development. In Cote d'Ivoire,
local people seize land back from migrant farmers who
thought they had bought it. And the commons - whether
grazing, woodlands or wetlands - are being eaten away by
enclosure, depriving the poorest people of their final
resort when times are tough. > Read
the article
Source:
International
Institute for Environment and Development
More:
The original essay by Garret Harding can be read here
(153kb pdf)
|
|
May
10, 2005
Land
in Africa, a two-day Conference, offered a
platform to explore current thinking and experience with
land tenure issues across the continent and debate how
best to promote secure rights, investment and economic
growth. Aimed at feeding ideas into the Commission
for Africa, the conference was coordinated by the International
Institute for Environment and Development (IIED),
the Natural
Resources Institute (NRI) of the University of
Greenwich and the Royal African Society (RAS) in
association with key African and European partners.
The
conference brought together more than 100 people from
Africa, Europe and North America including government
officials, representatives from civil society
organisations, research organisations, international
agencies and the private sector. Together participants
addressed two key dimensions of land and property rights
in Africa and their implications for future stability,
prosperity and poverty reduction. These were: The links
between property rights, investment and the generation
of economic opportunities in the context of global
integration. How best to secure access to land for
farmers and the urban poor as the basis for improved
livelihoods and food security. The conference included
keynote presentations, plenary discussion and working
group sessions. Participants discussed the conditions
under which different approaches to securing rights over
land can be successful, taking into account dynamic
change at local, regional and international levels. (10
May 2005)
More
details and conference papers can be found here.
|
|
May
6, 2005
Land
and Economic Growth
Declining
rural poverty in Vietnam is due partly to the equitable
distribution of productive assets, in particular, land.
This finding has also been highlighted in a new study
" Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a
Decade of Reform" by the World Bank's Poverty
Reduction and Economic Management Network. The
study reviews the growth impact of the main economic
policy and institutional reforms introduced in the
1990s, and presents a broad perspective on the events,
country experiences, academic research and controversies
of the decade, and reflects on how they alter our
thinking about economic growth. Although macroeconomic
stability and sustained growth are considered of key
factors in development and poverty reduction, the
importance of tenure security, enforceability of real
property rights and equity in land distribution are
noted.
Source:
You can download the full report from the World bank's
website here.
|
|
April
30, 2005
Land
and Poverty Reduction in Vietnam
Poverty
has halved in Vietnam in the last 15 years. Why? Growth
in all sectors of the economy has been rapid and
sustained and shared by most of the population. In
contrast to other developing countries in the region
where growth has little impact on poverty, Vietnam has
the benefit of equality in the distribution of important
economic assets, particularly land. Effective
and fair redistribution of land to individual farming
households allowed most rural households to benefit from
agricultural growth. However, a recent Asian Development
Bank sponsored workshop held recently heard that more
has to be done to ensure greater transparency in land
administration and that the poor continue to benefit
from an active land market.
Source:
Asian
Development Bank
|
|
The
Property Profession and the Poor ( 23
April 2005)
The
March 2005 edition of the magazine of the Royal
Institution of Charted Surveyors - RICS Business -
reports on the outcomes of an international conference
on how property rights can be used to alleviate poverty
in the world's poorest countries. The RICS is a
professional umbrella organisation for a wide spectrum
of surveying practice - management, valuation, quantity
surveying, for example - with an emphasis on the UK
built environment. This article illustrates the rising
profile of the importance of property rights and good
land administration for promoting socioeconomic
development. > Read
the full article (187kb pdf)
Source:
Royal
Institution of Chartered Surveyors
|
|
MCA
Award for the
Guyana Land Administration Support Programme
(15
April 2005) HTSPE have been awarded the bronze medal for
Best Management Practice by the UK Management
Consultancies Association, a first for a development aid
programme. The award was received in the Change
Management category for HTSPE’s work with the Guyana
Lands and Surveys Commission, a DFID funded programme
which ended in 2005.
HTSPE
(UK) and SRKN’Gineering (Guyana) originally won the
contract for Phase I of the Guyana Land Administration
Support Programme (GLASP) in 1997. Phase II commenced in
2000 and ran on to 2005. The main aim was to reduce
poverty in Guyana through the modernisation of land
administration and planning services and reform of land
tenure and administration in all aspects.
Overall,
through policy, planning, institutional reform and
service delivery the programme was highly successful. A
functional semi-autonomous and self-financing Lands and
Surveys Commission was created, equipped and all staff
trained.
The
Chief Executive Officer and Commissioner of Lands Mr.
Andrew Bishop recently commented that “while important
challenges remain, with the able support of the GLASP
team the institution and its staff have been transformed
from a very low starting point. Many believed it was not
doable. Working as a team we have all proved them wrong.
Five years on we are now one of the regional leaders in
land administration and continuing to advance”.
The
Management Consultancies Association (MCA) Awards, now
in its ninth year, recognises excellence and best
management practice and are also a barometer of trends
within the business.
An
independent jury of business-people, journalists and
academics closely assessed individual client assignments
from a whole host of companies before selecting what it
believed to be the most value-rich, innovative and
successful projects.
The
consulting business in UK has enjoyed sustained growth
over the past two years and MCA director Sarah Taylor
said “there’s increasing pressure on consultants to
provide value for money, and this year’s entries
suggest that they are working harder than ever to
demonstrate the return on investment”. She was
particularly excited by the sheer variety of projects
that were submitted for consideration, in terms of scale
and geographical spread (from Wales to Guyana).
Capita
Consulting took the gold award in the Change Management
category for its work for the Department for Work and
Pensions (DWP) in the replacement of the Minimum Income
Guarantee with a new entitlement Pension credit.
The
silver award went to Jack Morton Worldwide for its work
in the Department of Health’s year long scheme NHS
Live to accelerate cultural change across the NHS,
underpinning the strategy to create a more patient-centred
NHS.
Source:
HTSPE
The text of the GLASP submission can be read here.
More
about GLASP on LandAdmin.co.uk can be found here.
|
|
Land
Administration in the News
Two
recent stories from the popular press highlight some of
the problems that can be encountered by ordinary people,
both rich and poor, when they face bureaucracy and
less-than-good land administration. The first case
involves a wealthy couple from England buying land in
Turkey; the second comes from Trinidad and is a good
illustration of the emotions, which many times can
overflow and lead to violence, and why the State does
not usually make a good landlord.
|
|
Brazilian
Land Reform
Members
of Brazil's Landless Workers Movement (MST) have
occupied 12 farms to try to pressure the government to
speed up land reform. More than 5,000 families from the
MST have moved on to the farms in the north-eastern
state of Pernambuco, one of Brazil's poorest. The MST
said the government had failed to live up to its
election promises to have settled 400,000 families by
2007. The BBC Online reports that the government says it
has settled little over a quarter of that number. The
MST said the real figure is much lower. Brazil has one
of the biggest wealth gaps in the world. Nearly half of
all farmland is owned by just 1 percent of the
population. Brazil's Landless Movement, the MST, usually
steps up action in April to commemorate the murders of
19 activists in 1996. MST leaders said they still had
hope in Brazil's first working-class president, Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva, who promised to buy disused land
and redistribute it to poor families with no home of
their own.
Source:
Developmentex
Links: Landless
Workers Movement
|
|
Madagascar
and the MCC
The
US foreign aid program, the Millennium Challenge Corp.,
or MCC, this week approved its first project with a $110
million grant for Madagascar, reports Dow Jones. The
four-year agreement aims to cut rural poverty in the
southern African nation with measures to strengthen
property rights, make credit more available and provide
technical and investment assistance to farmers, the MCC
said in a statement. Poverty in Madagascar is
overwhelmingly rural: seven out of every ten people live
in a rural area and four out of every five rural
inhabitants live on less than 41 cents a day, according
to the MCC. Critics have complained the first MCC
project has been slow in coming. US Treasury
Undersecretary for International Affairs John Taylor
argued that establishing procedures and setting up the
structure of the MCC required time. He said the compact
with Madagascar, and others expected to follow soon,
moved as quickly as those managed by the World Bank,
where procedures and staff have long been in place.
Reuters adds the MCC said its board on Monday approved
the "compact" with Madagascar laying out how
the money would be spent. Madagascar has already
received some funds to improve its Bureau of National
Statistics, but it will not be eligible for the bulk of
the money until the "compact" is formally
signed, which is expected to happen in April, MCC
officials said.
Source:
Developmentex
Links: Millennium
Challenge Corporation
|
|
DFID
Support to Land Reform in South Africa
A
recently announced contract notice by the UK's Department
for International Development bears witness to
continuing support of donor agencies in land reform and
the land sector. In this instance DFID are looking for
consultants to implement a programme which will focus on
two marginalised groups: farm dwellers and informal
urban settlers. The aim is to strengthen people's secure
access to, and use of, land as a key asset for their
urban and rural livelihoods. > Read the DFID Contract
Notice here
|
|
Making
Markets Work for the Poor
Poverty
is reducing substantially for many millions of people
and a critical reason for this achievement is improved
functioning of markets. Countries that have been
successful in reducing poverty have utilised and shaped
markets to provide the right conditions – jobs,
opportunities, services, information – to allow people
to raise their incomes. In short, they have made the
markets in which the poor exist – as consumers,
producers and workers – work more effectively for
them.
|
|
New
Mapping Policy Forming for India.
Map
India - 2005 kicked of this week. The Minister of State
for Science and Technology and Ocean Development, Shri
Kapil Sibal, told the conference attendees that a New
Mapping Policy is in the final stage of preparation. The
new Mapping Policy "would lead to map data being
available and accessible to all areas of the country
including the Jammu and Kashmir and the North East
besides the coastal zones."
Source:
Directions
magazine More
|
|
World
Bank Group President visits Cambodia
A
highlight of the visit was a ceremony where Mr.
Wolfensohn handed out new land certificates to
residents.
He noted that having rights to land marks a new
opportunity for the Cambodian people to invest in their
farms, small businesses, and houses, to improve their
financial security and their lives – and is key in the
fight against poverty.
With support from the World Bank-financed Land
Management and Administration project, the Government is
issuing 20,000 titles a month, mostly in rural areas, in
a transparent and participatory process, with
80% of the these titles registered jointly by wife and
husband or by female-headed households.
Source:
World
Bank Group
|
|
|
|
COLOMBIA:
LAND POLICY IN TRANSITION
The
harmful impact of inequality—on incomes, assets,
voice, and opportunities—in Latin America is well
recognized. Land inequality is associated with higher
violence and lower land productivity. Even using land
valuation (avaluo) instead of physical area, land
inequality in Colombia remains high, with a Gini
coefficient of 0.85 (compared to Korea with 0.35, or
Japan with 0.38). Successful land policy could help
break the vicious cycle of inequality, violence,
underutilization of productive resources, and poverty. A
multipronged strategy is needed, including (a) direct
measures to reduce violence and its consequences; (b)
more use of markets to improve competitiveness and
correct deep-rooted structural inequalities; and (c)
measures to complement markets and/or improve their
functioning, to better benefit small producers, foster
diversification and rural growth. Colombia's experiences
with market-assisted land reform pilots (Höllinger
1999) and projects that put land reform within the
context of broader entrepreneurial development (Rojas
and Urbina 1999) provide important lessons for moving
forward.
Source:
World
Bank
|
|
Finnish
Government to support Sustainable Management of Land and
Environment in Zanibar
The
Purpose of the Project is to reduce absolute poverty in
the society though environmentally sound land management
and socio-economic development. The specific objective
is to ensure that sustainable land and environmental
management practices are in use to achieve sustainable
development.
The
Project Purpose will be achieved through the
implementation of the following Components:
Component
1: will establish sufficient institutional capacity at
Department of Surveys and Urban Planning, Department of
Land and Registration and Department of Environment to
enable effective implementation of land and
environmental and related policies.
Component
2: will aim at improving security of land tenure and
sustainable use of land.
Component
3: will develop environmentally and socially sound land
use and natural resource management and establish
mechanisms where development projects are based on
environmental standard and guidelines.
Component
4: will increase awareness of communities, NGOs, civil
society and public at large on protection and
sustainable use of land and wise use of natural
resources.
The
project is planned based on the Strategic Plan 2005-2015
and will be implemented in several phases. The first
phase 2005-2009 will be implemented according to the
Implementation Plan 2005-2009 and the special Term of
Reference drafted for the Finnish contribution. The team
of Local Coordinator (48 m/m), international short and
long term experts (83 m/m) a Junior Professional (21
m/m) and local short and long-term specialists (25 m/m)
are expected to work for the Project in close
cooperation with the Department of Surveys and Urban
Planning, Department of Land and Registration and
Department of Environment.
The
planned total budget of the project is 4.5 million euros,
and will be financed by the Governments of Finland and
Zanzibar.
The
duration of the Project is expected to be four years,
from April 2005 to February 2009.
Read
more
|
|
|
|
El
Salvador Land Administration Project II
January
2005
The
World Bank has approved a loan of US$40.2 million to
complete the regularization of tenure across the
country. The project builds on the first phase, LAP I,
which continues to advance very satisfactorily toward
achieving its development objective and is considered a
best practice in the region. The project will be
extended into urban and peri-urban areas, where the
poorest of the poor can be found, and broadening the
concepts of regularization - a dissemination campaign,
mapping, verification of rights, delimitation of
properties, notification of results of field conflict
resolution, registration of existing titles - to
including titling activity. LAP II also includes a
component to strengthen municipal land administration
services. > Read
more
|
|
ETHIOPIA
January
2005
Ten
million farmers will receive certificates guaranteeing
land rights, deflecting criticism over Ethiopia's
controversial tenure system, officials said this week.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has
pledged that all the farmers would receive the
certificates over the next three years. Critics of the
government's land policy argue that state ownership in a
rural-based economy prevents farmers from investing more
heavily in their land to boost harvests. However,
Mulugeta Debalkew, spokesman for the ministry, told IRIN
that the new strategy would boost agricultural
productivity by creating greater security for farmers.
Raising agricultural productivity in Ethiopia is crucial
to the government's poverty alleviation strategy as part
of their agricultural development-led industrialization.
Currently, 85 percent of the people are subsistence
farmers. "Certification is in favor of the poor and
it empowers women by legally guaranteeing their right to
use land," Mulugeta said. Although a pilot land
certification scheme had been underway since 2003, the
program is now being expanded across the country.
Mulugeta said Ethiopia's largest region - Oromiya, which
has a population of 30 million people - was expected to
begin issuing certificates this week.
Source:
DevelopmentEX
|
|
Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - Real Estate Cadastre
and Registration Project
The
objective of this World Bank funded project includes
building an efficient and effective real estate cadastre
and registration system, contributing to the development
of efficient land and real estate markets. The focus of
the project will be on, inter alia, accelerating
the establishment of the real estate cadastre and the
registration of rights. Read
more...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|