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News
2006
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December
2006
Largest
Land Administration Project Ever?
The
World Bank recently approved a loan of US$62.3 million
to Guatemala, a country of 12.2 million people, for the
second phase of the National Land Administration
Project. The objective is to extend the successes of the
first phase to seven new districts, effectively covering
half the country with a strengthened and more integrated
cadastre and land registry. The largest part of the
multi-component project is for land regularization - in
other words, the settlement, adjudication and
formalization of land rights to enable registration.
Together
with the first phase, supported by a loan of US$38.8
million also from the World Bank, this represents an
investment of over US$50 per beneficiary family. Is this
the largest investment ever made in good land
administration in the developing world?
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November
2006
Land
Policies & Legal Empowerment of the Poor
A
workshop held at the World Bank in Washington D.C.
recently, brought together experts from around the world
to exchange ideas and share experiences on land policy
issues. More specifically the workshop had the
objectives of establishing a better basis for impact
evaluation of land administration programmes and
projects, and to consider a common global land tenure
indicator. The discussion themes were framed by the
policy of good governance and how this might be achieved
by implementing an agenda to legally empower the poor
through, inter alia, the formalization of
property rights and their effective enforcement. Papers
and presentations delivered at the workshop are
available on the World
Bank's website.
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November
2006
Create
a Street Address Game
Are
you good at games, or more specifically, inventing
games? If you are, then the World Bank would like to
hear from you. The Urban and Local Government Program of
the World Bank Institute is inviting game inventors, of
the analogue kind, to submit proposals for educational
and entertaining game about street naming and house
numbering. "Street Addressing", as it is more
commonly known in development circles, is a programme
that tackles the issues of identifying properties by
streets and buildings in towns and cities, mainly for
the purpose of providing local government services. The
game will serve as a training tool used to
demonstrate the importance of street identification and
naming in developing countries. Though the subject of
Street Addressing is vast and technically detailed, the
scope of the game will be limited to familiarizing
learners with basic terminologies, key ideas, and
techniques and applications of street addressing. > More
>
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November
2006
Kenya
Land Policy
The
Government of Kenya has recently published its first
land policy document that seeks to achieve greater
equity in the distribution of land. To achieve this, the
Government proposes to implement measures that makes
land more accessible, especially to the poor. A key
development is the move to harmonize all land matters
under one legal framework, with land categorized as
either public, private or customary, and that rights
relating to land in each category are treated equally
and are protected by statutory law. Other measures
include creating a new National Lands Commission,
district and community land boards, and a land Court and
land tribunal.
Source:
SDI
Africa Newsletter
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October
2006
Sodic
Lands Reform
Improving
the livelihoods of the rural poor in Uttar Pradesh,
India, requires raising the productivity of agricultural
land that has over the years become infertile due to
high salt content. A successful World Bank funded
project helped small and landless farmers to improve
yields by, in part, improving land rights and tenure
security. Lessons learned from the first phase of the
project include:
"One
of the project’s most effective and enduring
interventions was in land tenure. Although many landless
laborers and poor marginal farmers received land during
India’s land reforms in the 1970s, this remained, for
the most part, a nominal transfer."
"More
often than not, these farmers possessed only a piece of
paper, with land on the ground being neither demarcated
nor handed over to the recipients.
The Project worked with the local land records
departments to secure unfettered title for farmers whose
rights over their lands had not been formalized for
decades."
"Moreover,
some community land - belonging to gram sabhas or local
governance bodies - was handed over to landless
families. More than 50,000 hectares of land was thus
handed over to landless, small and marginal
farmers."
Source:
World
Bank
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October
2006
International
Federation of Surveyors (FIG) Congress
2006
Munich,
Germany, witnessed the quadrennial gathering, 8-13
October, of surveyors from around the world for the 23rd
Congress of International Federation of Surveyors. Over
100 papers were presented in themes ranging from land
administration to land valuation. Two papers of note
published in the proceedings
are: World
Bank Support for Land Administration and Management:
Responding to the Challenges of the Millennium
Development Goals by Keith Bell, and Policies
and Practices for Securing and Improving Access to Land
Issue Paper No.1 by Lorenzo Cotula, et al.
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September
2006
DFID
must do more in the area of property rights and land
tenure
This
is one of the conclusions of UK House of Commons
International Development Committee report on private
sector development. The Committee also recommend that
capacity within DFID is built to develop a coherent
strategy and internal expertise for scaling up it's
property rights programmes. The reports states "DFID
is becoming more engaged in the property rights agenda
but capacity and activity remains limited. There appears
to be no specific staff expertise in this area within
DFID and capacity needs to be stepped up. The need for
flexibility across varying country contexts and
sensitivity around a politically-charged issue should
not prevent DFID from increasing and broadening its
property rights programmes, as long as this expansion is
underpinned by a coherent strategy and in-house
expertise." (Paragraph 43). Also "DFID should
expand its resources for property rights work to ensure
programmes and projects are prioritised for fragile and
conflict-affected states." (Paragraph 70)
The
section of the report dealing with property rights can
be read in its entirety here.(72kb
pdf file). The whole report of the House of Commons
Committee can be found on the DFID website.
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August
1, 2006
Making
Governance Work for the Poor
The
Department for International Development have recently
published a Parliamentary White Paper that outlines the
UK Government's proposed strategy for helping to
eliminate world poverty. This emphasises, inter alia,
the building of effective states and better governance.
Throughout the developing world, land and property are
key livelihood assets for many if not most poor people,
and the role of institutions in controlling access to
land, security of tenure, and equity of property
markets, is a key part of this governance initiative.
Case studies from Tajikistan, Botswana and elsewhere,
are used to justify the strategy that the UK "will
help to tackle the barriers that prevent poor people
from gaining access to markets and financial services,
including by improving property rights". Source: DFID.
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July
11, 2006
Royal
Institution of Chartered Surveyors Supports Extension of
Land Title Registration in England and Wales
Her
Majesty's Land Registry (HMLR) and the Royal Institution
of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) have pledged their
commitment to create a more comprehensive Land Register
for England and Wales by signing a Memorandum of
Understanding that commits the the two organisations to
work together to better serve the property industry.
Land registration in most parts of England and Wales is
still a voluntary choice but HMLR hope that with the
support of RICS members, because, in the words of the
RICS President Steve Williams, "Chartered Surveyors
provide essential business and property advice to their
clients, they are central and critical drivers behind
the push for land registration. The RICS fully supports
the Land Registry in its initiative to achieve a
comprehensive Land Register of England and Wales by 2012
and believe it to be in the best interest of the public,
property owners and, from a world view, the nation's
economy".
Source:
www.rics.org
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June
11 2006
Who
needs land surveyors?
"You
were, as you say, taken on as a surveyor, but we don't
need a surveyor. There wouldn't be the least bit of work
for a person like that. The boundaries of our small
holdings have been marked out, everything has been duly
registered, the properties themselves rarely change
hands and whatever small boundary disputes arise, we
settle ourselves. So why should we have any need for a
surveyor?"
From
the book The Castle by Franz Kafka.
Source:
GIS
Monitor newsletter from GITC America June 8 2006
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June
4 2006
Is
land title registration appropriate in
rural Sub-Saharan Africa?
Two
pieces in the latest SDI
Africa Newsletter present different examples of why
registration should or shouldn't be implemented for
rural lands in Africa. The Ethiopia National
Conference on Standardisation of Rural Land Registration
and Cadastral Surveying Methodologies focused on how to
uniquely identify rural land parcels, how they can be
surveyed and how to keep the records up-to-date. A study
conducted in Madagascar presented another view, and the
researchers concluded that, based on their cost-benefit
analysis, formal land titling programmes should not be
extended in rural areas.
Click
the following links to download the two papers:
http://www.gsdi.org/SDIA/docs2006/jun06links/ELTAP-Standardization.pdf
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTISPMA/Resources/Training-Events-and-Materials/Land_Titles_MG.pdf
Information
about the Ethiopian Integrated Urban Land Information
Systems Project, which is designing an urban land
registration system for Ethiopia, is available on the LandAdmin
site
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May
20, 2006
Is
land title registration the answer to
insecure and uncertain property rights in sub-Saharan
Africa?
Raymond
Talinbe Abdulai of the School of Engineering and the
Built Environment University of Wolverhampton asks the
question, examines the evidence and reaches a
conclusion. A research paper recently published by the
Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, it provides an
overview of the importance of secure and certain
property rights and the form and function of land title
registration before examining some of the case studies
on the impacts of land title registration in Sub-Saharan
Africa. These impacts have been positive, negative and
neutral: but is title registration a key ingredient of
secure tenure? In my
opinion the final conclusion is partly
correct - that title registration is not a panacea for
insecure tenure; other factors are far more important.
However, the conclusion that title registration doesn't
have a role in addressing uncertain property rights can
be questioned. The evidence suggests that in differing
environments there are different needs and in some
circumstances, and where rights are more formally based
and transacted, then land title registration has a very
positive role to play.
Click
the following link to download the paper (398kb pdf)
from the RICS website.
http://www.rics.org/NR/rdonlyres/DEAE1732-522E-4C2A-A521-418648DDF6F6/0/Finalversionofpaper.pdf
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March
10, 2006
Participatory
Mapping in the Amazonian Forests
A
January 2006 news items published by MSNBC highlights
the use of GPS technology to map ten million acres of
Amazon rainforest in north east Brazil. A joint venture
of local and international NGOs, supported by the
Brazilian Government, the project empowers indigenous
communities to better assert their land rights claims.
The maps produced shows previously unknown villages,
holy places and hunting trails. The map also serves as
an Amazonian zoning guide, indicating the location of
villages, resources and even a strictly protected
“no-hunting” zone in the middle of the tribes’
lands. More importantly, the map helps prove that the
land is occupied by indigenous tribes, which will help
the communities defend their rights against outsiders,
particularly gold miners. The map also served as an
exercise in community-building. Before the project, the
tribes tended to keep to themselves in separate
territories within the Tumucumaque region.
Source:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3077244/
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January
3, 2005
Clarifying
Property Rights to Facilitate Land Markets
The
World Bank is supporting property rights improvement
projects in some 15 countries throughout the Eastern
European and Central Asian Regions. The projects
demonstrate the Bank’s recognition that the ready
availability of information about property (that is,
cadastre and registration records) combined with the
security of rights recorded in the system leads to
increased agricultural productivity, increased value of
land and other real estate, consolidation of fragmented
rural lands, and general improvement of the efficiency
of the rural and urban land markets. Projects in several
ECA countries have demonstrated that efficient and
effective property rights system are a contributing
factor to economic growth and private sector
development. Projects in Armenia, Kyrgyz Republic,
Slovenia, and Tajikistan are highlighted on the World
Bank website.
Source:
World
Bank
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