Land Administration - Underpinning Land Management

by Peter Dale

Ladies and Gentlemen

Before beginning my presentation on Land Management issues I would like to take this opportunity of congratulating Commission 7 on its great achievements over the last years and in particular to embarrass Ian Williamson by paying tribute to his leadership. FIG owes him a great debt of gratitude. That having been said he would be the first to agree that he could not have achieved all that he has done without the support of the Commission members. The personal contribution of each and every one of you is important and the outcome of the deliberations held here this week will have a significant impact all around the world.

The work of your Commission is topical because many countries are struggling to reform their cadastres in line with the needs of the 21st Century. Cadastre and land management - what in the report of the Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) prepared for the Habitat II Conference we called Land Administration - involve a great diversity of disciplines - surveyors, lawyers, economists and accountants, planners and architects, geographers and social scientists, environmentalists and ecologists, agriculturists and soil scientists to name but a few. All these disciplines have a basic concern for the land, all examine it from different perspectives, but none treats it as a whole. The challenge that we all face is how to draw all this together. Your Commission is leading the way.

One of the major difficulties is that we use terms like ’land’ and ’cadastre’ in so many different ways. Consider the term ’land management’. To a soil scientist, and indeed to a number of aid agencies, it means the conservation of soils while to a land administrator it is concerned with land tenure. In the UNECE Land Administration Guidelines Tland managementU is described as the process by which the resources of the land are put to good effect. It is therefore said to include farming, mineral extraction, property and estate management and the physical planning of towns and the countryside. Land management also embraces such matters as the development and management of utilities and services, property conveyancing, property assessment and valuation, the management of land resources such as forestry, soils, or agriculture, the formation and implementation of land use policies, environmental impact assessment, and the monitoring of all activities on land to ensure its best use.

The confusion over terminology also embraces the word ’land’. In western jurisdictions, land is defined as including all appurtenances attached thereto. Elsewhere, for instance in Russia, buildings are regarded as separate entities that can be owned outright without owning the land on which they stand. For practical reasons, many surveyors distinguish between land and property because each poses a different set of management issues. The word ’land’ then does not encompass property and construction - these belong to estate management or to construction economics (sometimes known as quantity surveying).

Confusion is not always obvious. The term ’cadastre’ is used in different ways by almost every country, something that was realised by the authors of the FIG Statement on the Cadastre. The differences are not simply those between the juridical, fiscal and multi-purpose cadastres. They go much deeper and indeed interpretations vary within any given country.

Similar uncertainty exists with regard to the meaning of ’land reform’. This can refer to land settlement, land consolidation, land restitution (privatisation and re-privatisation), land law reform, land tax reform, and the reform of land markets. For some it is simply an agricultural issue while for others it is concerned more with economics and the establishment of lines of credit, based on an ability to mortgage land and property.

In many countries in economic transition, the prime concern is to create more efficient land markets. The focus on land markets is taking place partly in response to the needs of countries in economic transition but also because of the impact of information technology which is creating more data on land and property than ever before. Largely thanks to developments in computer technology, it is now possible to analyse markets in new and exciting ways. New techniques are needed to take advantage of these data, especially with regard to the valuation of land. Estimating the worth of a piece of land is currently more an art than a science. Admittedly in much of eastern Europe, it has been a mechanical process but the resulting values have borne little relationship to those in the market place.

The promotion of land markets is especially important in the countries of east and central Europe. Many of the current land reform programmes that have been funded by the World Bank and the Europe Union, for instance under the PHARE programme, were initially driven more by a sense of justice than by economics. Land markets are now evolving throughout central and eastern Europe, albeit more slowly in rural areas than in urban. Large sums of money are being spent on technology to support land registration and often excessive amounts of data are being gathered. Time alone will tell whether these will lead to more efficient or effective land use policies.

The land reform programmes in eastern and central Europe are being driven as much by a faith in land markets per se as by any rational assessment of how such markets affect the national economy. When Africa went through a period of land tenure reform in the 1960s at the time when Britain de-colonised the motives were different and there was limited research into land markets. New systems of tenure were introduced that were unsympathetic to the tradition cultures of the people. The result was either great social change or a de facto reversion to traditional methods of land dealing - now called informal systems. In the early part of this decade, central and eastern Europe began a similar transformation when Russia de-colonised. Unlike the changes in Africa where the emphasis was on creating new systems prior to independence, the trend in Europe has been to re-create the old systems that were practised prior to the loss of independence, that is prior to 1948 or thereabouts.

The processes of land privatisation (creating new owners) and re-privatisation (restoring the rights of former owners) have tended to create inefficient patterns of land use, with a high number of small parcels for each farmer. This makes the introduction of modern farming methods difficult. In several countries in eastern Europe the break-up of the old co-operative farms has lead to many instances of subsistence agriculture.

It is of course wrong to generalise too much. In parts of Poland the communist regime allowed the private ownership of farms to continue although urban land was strictly controlled. The reverse happened in Bulgaria where the private ownership of apartments continued, subject to market controls, while agricultural land was collectivised. In both countries there were and still are inadequate resources available to improve the infrastructure in both urban and rural areas. In many countries in economic transition the system of inheritance has led to land fragmentation and farms with as few as five hectares, sometimes divided into more than a dozen fields scattered over areas of several square kilometres. In such circumstances the land will need to be consolidated if agriculture is to become economically viable and sustainable.

The mechanisms of the land market are too inefficient to ensure that a more rational distribution of farm land can be brought about solely through the operations of the land market. Governments will in due course have to intervene. That will require significant sums of money and the re-deployment of millions of poor people currently working on the land. Either new rural industries will need to be created - agrotourism is an often favoured solution in Poland - or else more people will migrate away from rural areas thus putting much greater pressure on urban environments.

Perhaps the greatest area of concern for land managers should be that the world population is not only growing but is also moving from the countryside into the towns. In 1970 an estimated two thirds of the world’s population lived in rural areas where people were largely dependent on agriculture for a living; by 2030 two thirds of the worlds population will live in towns and cities. Four out of every five human beings will live within fifty kilometres of the coast - an area that is ecologically already very sensitive.

Two simple conclusions can be drawn from these statistics. The first is that we need to focus much more on the management of urban land; the second is that we must reform our techniques for coastal zone management. I hope that Commission 7 will do both of these things.

In addition, there is little doubt that environmental issues will become even more important as greater pressure is put on the land. In 1992, the specific problems of environmental management were addressed at the United Nations Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro. The outcome of the meeting was a programme for the 21st century known as Agenda 21. In spite of its initial high profile it now attracts relatively little attention. The United Nations maintains a Committee for Sustainable Development but there is an unwillingness, especially by the rich, to pay for the reforms that are needed to ensure sustainability. Unfortunately, as with land consolidation, the land market is too crude a mechanism to ensure proper environmental protection.

The City Summit or Habitat II, held in Istanbul in June 1996, produced the United Nations Global Plan of Action which amongst many other matters, stressed the importance of good land management. Its fate is likely to be the same as Agenda 21 - some good publicity, a heightened awareness of the issues and a refusal to pay for what needs to be done.

Both United Nations documents raise complex issues. By and large we understand agriculture and farming and life in the rural areas. We do not really understand how cities work nor how they are dependent on their hinterland; nor, indeed, do we understand how the hinterland is dependent on the cities other than for market outlets. Cities need green surroundings so that their inhabitants can quite literally breathe; they need the hinterland for food, for recreation and of course for expansion.

During the Habitat II Conference, the FIG in conjunction with the International Federation for Real Estate (FIABCI) and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlement (UNHCS (Habitat)) organised a Dialogue to consider land policy and the rural/urban linkages. Just as the coastal zone is an environmentally sensitive area, so the interface between cities and the countryside needs special attention.

While the debate in Istanbul did not throw great light on the relationships between urban and rural areas, it became clear that, if we are to meet all the requirements for more effective land and property management, we must work in multi-disciplinary teams. No one profession has a monopoly of wisdom or is able to bring expertise to all areas that must be addressed. The traditional rivalries between professions must be overcome.

Furthermore, within individual countries, the professions must be encouraged to be more proactive. Politicians in many countries, especially in the Third World, have had a distrust of professional institutions, seeing them all to often as organisations seeking monopoly for their members and promoting their own self interest. Undoubtedly there have been occasions where this has happened. Nevertheless, the complexity of the problems and the limited resources available has brought about a change in attitude on both sides. Professional associations are much more aware of their responsibilities while politicians are more likely to recognise the skills that are available to them through co-operation with the professions.

There is a trend in which international agencies and national governments are beginning to listen to those non-government organisations (NGOs) that have skills or resources that can be used in the interest of the community. The Habitat II Conference, for example, laid special emphasis on the contribution that can be made by NGOs, especially those operating at the local level. It recognised that decision making at the local level is of critical importance and that local governments should participate in the Global Plan of Action.

Not everything can or should be done at government level. There is now an acceptance of the role of the informal sector in land management for instance in ensuring the provision of shelter. Cities work in spite of and outside of government controls. Although the infrastructure of informal settlements may be inadequate and is sometimes structurally dangerous, substantial numbers of people live in informal accommodation in Africa, Latin America, South East Asia and the Indian sub-continent. Land management at the informal level is as important as at the formal. Local people are a resource that if properly used can be self-sustaining.

An alternative to using people is to use machines. Technology is a resource that will influence the way in which land management techniques develop. The step from information technology to genetic engineering is relatively small but one that has already been taken. Technology transfer has been full of disasters and disappointments - there are no easy and instant solutions to land management issues. Probably the most important contribution that technology has made is to raise awareness of issues and force us to rethink what we are trying to achieve. Technology provides global solutions to local problems and must be made the servant of land managers, not their master.

The role of land information in land management is crucial. Poor information comes either from poor data, or poor data processing, or both. Defective information leads to defective decisions and greater risk in the management of the environment. The cadastre which is, more than anything else, an information system, must be handled with care and economy. Much cadastral work in the past has been of limited application, focusing on a narrow set of issues. The impact of technological development and the rebuilding of cadastres especially in central and eastern Europe has brought a new sense of urgency to cadastral re-engineering.

In these processes of change and reassessment it is important to learn from other people’s experiences. Organisations such as the FIG have been creating fora through which this can happen. Learning from others and examining other solutions to one’s own problems is of great benefit but introducing foreign solutions is a different matter. The cadastre provides an excellent example of the dangers of importing other people’s ideas without adapting them to local needs. Africa, for instance, has systems that were imposed during the colonial era and that were more in tune with the needs of the colonial masters than of the indigenous peoples. Customary tenures were often ignored and cadastral systems have proved too inflexible and too expensive to cope with the rapidly expanding urban environments. The consequence has been a breakdown of the formal tenure systems within many cities in the southern part of the great North-South divide.

It is arrogant to assume that what works at home works abroad. Nevertheless central and eastern Europe has recently seen a wave of consultants preaching the glories of their home based system without understanding the nuances and subtleties of the environment in which they were being paid to advise. A recent Meeting of Officials in Land Administration (MOLA) set up by the UNECE and chaired by Helge Onsrud, the chairman of our Commission 3, drew attention to this problem and suggested a need for a register of qualified consultants.

Of course there is a need to exchange experiences and to learn from each other. To pursue the European story, there is much that is superficially common in the problems being faced by countries in economic transition. Many have had similar cadastral systems imposed upon them and many are undergoing similar types of land reform funded by the EC PHARE programme. None are however the same. One does not have to dig far below the surface to find significant cultural and historical differences, let alone legal and economic variations. Dig further and one can reach bedrock where the generic problems are the same. The implementation of solutions, however, requires sensitive handling of the layers above the rock, tailoring the approach to the needs of the local community.

We need to explore land management both at the bedrock level and within the layers that lie upon it. To me one of the most exciting things about working in east and central Europe has been the discovery of the rich diversity of interests and approaches. From every one of these I have gained new insights and new understandings. Commission 7 is helping to extend our knowledge about the complexity of land issues. There are however no panaceas. Just as every community is slightly different so the land management solutions need to fit the local environment and not the reverse. At the end of the proverbial day, land administration systems must be built bottom up, not top down.