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News 2009
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| December 2009
A Changing Aid Strategy?
A possible, some say probable, change of government in the United Kingdom will usher in a new development aid strategy. The Conservative Party, should they win the forthcoming general election, plan a raft of changes, some controversial,
some less so that build on the Labour government's achievements. The
strengthening property rights is one specific area that is likely to
receive additional DfID support in the future. | | October 2009
Commitment to Development IndexMany
if not most land administration projects in the developing
world are made possible through donor funding. The commitment of
wealthy countries to fund aid programmes and projects and provide
budget support to developing countries is a measure of the state of
land administration activity. Some countries are more active in the
land administration sector than others, but what this interesting
graphic tool from the Centre for Global Development doesn't show is the effectiveness of each country's aid commiment.
 http://www.cgdev.org/section/initiatives/_active/cdi/
_____________________________________________ | | August 2009
Cambodia calls a halt to the Land Management and Administration Project Following
disagreements on how to approach issues of tenure security,
land titling and resettlement in urban areas, the Government
of Cambodia and the World Bank
have terminated the recently started Land Management and Administration
Project. This project, which sought to extend to peri-urban and urban
areas the successful results of rural land titling, proved unable to
address conflicts and disputes attributed to rapidly increasing land
values. The World Bank has called on the Government to improve its policy and legal framework for land resettlement. ___________ | | July 2009
 Cambodia's Development Partners Call for Halt to Evictions of Urban
Poor
The Government
of Cambodia is being asked by the World Bank, DfID, and other
development agencies to stop forced evictions from disputed lands
in Phnom Penh and elsewhere in the country until a fair and transparent
mechanism for resolving land title disputes is put in place. With the
help of the World Bank, Cambodia has achieved impressive results in
rural land titling and registration, but fast rising urban land prices
and speculation is reducing the tenure of large numbers of
urban dwellers. More here.
_____________________________________________________________________________________ | | June 2009
 ABC (A Brazil Catch 22)
You
are damned if you do, damned if you don't. Brazil's landless movement
(MST) have for many years advocated (and more) for land reform and
regularisation of titles for poor farmers. Many of these farmers
settled, out of necessity, on forest reserve land. Now the government
of Brazil, through Provisional Measure 458, wants to recognize these
people's possession and use of the land and grant them legal titles.
Problem is, environmental lobby groups say that giving titles to
'illegal occupiers' is tantamount to a land grab and a "green light" to
further illegal occupation and destruction of forest lands.
There's no easy solution to this quandry, although action delayed
makes action more difficult. More about this at the BBC.
_____________________________________________________________________________________ | | May 2009
A Development 2.0 Manifesto
 A list of twelve principles for shaping development suggested on the
World Bank's private sector development blog and inspired by 45
propositions for social media in web 2.0. Some are not applicable to
land administration reform; most are, such as free your data, fight the not invented here syndrome, and lower cost of failure. Well worth a read, here.
_____________________________________________________________________________________ | | April 2009
If You Want to Free Your Country, First Liberate Its Land
For those who missed it the first time around, an article that appeared in Newsweek by Fareed Zakaria.
_____________________________________________________________________________________ | | March 2009
Registration and Regulation
One
conclusion emerging from the World's current economic crisis is the
need for better regulation of financial markets. The same arguments are
made for land markets and it is now generally recognised that land
market functionality and efficiency requires complete and accessible information. This is typically provided by land registration.
Does registration perhaps have the same informational role in financial
markets? "Many of the derivavtives that have cuased the (economic)
crisis are bearer bonds, and there is no worldwide register of them"
says Hernando de Soto. The principle is the same - pulling trade and
assets out of the shadow economy - setting up registers and focusing on
transparency. "But de Soto never expected that he would be giving the
same advice to London and Washington as he would be giving to Africa"
concludes the interview in the Observer newspaper.
_____________________________________________________________________________________ | | March 2009
Slums and Informal Settlements
The film Slumdog Millionaire
has brought to a wider audience the problems of informal settlements
in less developed countries. Individuals may escape the slums by
their hard work or good fortune but the informality of their existence
and the problems this creates remains as intractable as ever, and
according to the UN is expected to keep growing. The issue
of informality and irregularity and potential solutions to the
problems these cause has been highlighted by luminaries such as
Hernando de Soto in his book The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else.
The policy debate has undoubtedly been stimulated by de Soto's
arguments, and the arguments of his detractors (e.g. Home and Lim in Demystifying the Mystery of Capital),
but more research is also undoubtedly needed to build on the
theoretical works of Douglas North in Institutions, Institutional
Change and Economic Performance, and the soon to be published book by
Benito Arrunda, Building Market Institutions: Property Rights, Business Formalization, and Economic Development.
_____________________________________________________________________________________ | | February 2009
Bulgaria Achieves a Milestone
 A
new property and cadastre system saves clients a week is the claim made
for the IT system developed under a World Bank
project officially launched on 2 February 2009. An important point
buried in the news release is that the joint information system (there
are separate cadastre and registration agencies) is merely the
culmination of many years of effort and nearly 30 million Euros of
investment. Many other reforms took place and the IT system cements the
building of a more reliable and transparent registration system and
provides the public with a truly world-class service. The IT system is
the culmination and perhaps the final milestone in Bulgaria's laudable
achievement. More information about Bulgaria's Cadastre and
Registration Project can be found at the World Bank's web site.
_____________________________________________________________________________________ | | January 2009
 The Best Land Law in Africa?
This
question was posed by DFID about Mozambique's land law of 1997. It
could be argued that this is indeed the case, but that is
immaterial if the law is not applied in practice and people don't know
about it or how to benefit from it. This was one of the conclusions of
a case study reported on DFID's web site:
that the law has not been applied extensively enough and more land must
be registered and the rights of farmers better secured. Mozambique is a
big country, so it will take some time and considerable resources;
Rwanda, however, is a much smaller country...
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