INTERVIEW

GIM Internationalinterviews Clarissa Augustinus, UN-HABITAT

New 100ls in land AdministrationAre Required

In November 2004 an Expert Group Meeting on Secure Land Tenure was heldat UN Headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. The focus of this meeting was todiseuse new legal frameworks for the improvement of land tenure security andrelc -I implemeniation tools, to discuss evolutionary approaches for recordingand mapping of land ten ure [orms, and to discuss possibilities to improveexisting land administration systems. During this unique meeting of socialscientists, anthropologists, lawyers and land surveyors, CIM Internationaltook the opportunitu to meet Dl' Clarissa Augustinus, chief of UN-HABITAT's Land & Tenure Section.

By Chnsuaan Lemmen. comributmg editor. GIM lnternauonal

Why has UN-HABITAT co-sponsoredthis meeting?

UN-HABITAT has a global man-date to assist Member Statesaround the world to deliversecurity af ten ure, especial-ly to the urban poor. Thetool used by UN-HABITATto fulfil this mandate is the

Surveyors haveto co-operate

Global Campaign for SecureTenure, which has con-tributed to the funding oftros Expert Group Meeting.The Global Campaign forSecure Tenure has a hugetask, as among the greatestchallenges facing hu-mankind in the new millen-nium is rapid urbanisationand increasing poverty,both af which are closelylinked to land. Based anU i-HABITAT's estimates,since 1950 mankind has en-

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dured its most rapid expansion,from 2.5 billion to 6 billion peo-pIe. UN-HABITAT estimates thataf these 6 billion people, a total afabout 924 million people lived in

the world's urban slums in 2001.The major challenges in the landsector and for this meeting are,firstly, to deliver new tools in se-curity of tenure to slum dwellersthrough upgrading and, second-ly, the adoption of pro-poorurban land policies designed toprevent the emergence of newslums. For UN-HABITAT this isthe umbrella for this ExpertGroup Meeting and we hope tohear about same of the solutiansto meet these challenges. Thesesolutions are necessary so that themajority of urban residents inAfrica who are now living with-out security af tenure will be ableto attain tenure security, maveaway from a life of poverty andhave a better future.

What needs to be done I How willtools be developed?

Clarissa Augusiinus and Chrisiiaan Lemmen.

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INTERVIEW

With respect to land and securityaf tenure I have been arguing thatincreasing our global under-standing. description and anaiy-sis af land-related issues is rieces-sary, but not sufficient, to be able

lack af human and financial re-sources.The 19905 were dominated by thesocial scientists working an landpolicy and law, aften without anystrong linkages to the technical

We don't have sufficient pro-poor too/s

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to deliver land-related changes incountries, regians and at a globallevel. Instead we have to link thedescription and analysis af landissues with implementation,drawing from the type af ap-proaches found in surveying, val-uation, registration and planning.which put an emphasis an the de-livery af land and other services.That is, the term tool develop-ment is firstly describing andanalysing. then setting the agen-da for research in to the creationaf tools and developing the toolsthat allow us to implement large-scale changes in the land arena,and finaJly implementation at fullscale with evaluation. Given thenature of land, this ean generallyonly be done within a country,with the country and with multi-stakeholder involvement. How-ever, global, and especially re-gional, best practices are alsoaften capable af adaptation.

Are there new tools apart from clas-sieal - eonventional - land titling!

Absolutely. Up until the 1970sand 1980s most of the land toolswere focused around land titlingand their implementation was thepreserve af lawyers and survey-ors, However, in the 1980s and in-creasing very strongly in the1990s, many well-respected socialscience researchers both in theurban and rural sectors arguedthat individualised land titlingwas not working and that alter-native farms af delivering securi-ty af tenure here in sub-SaharanAfrica had to be found. It was notworking because it only benefitedthe middle class, was not afford-able, did not take into accountthat the social land ten ures inplace were based an gro up andfamily rights and, most impor-tantly, the countries were battlingto scale up to cover the majorityof their populations because of a

people who would have to imple-ment the policy and law. Thesetechnical and legal people wereaften isolated because of their lackaf pro-poar tools and their focusan delivery af land titles to themiddle class. The result of thislack af linkage was land poli-cies/laws that could not be imple-mented and / ar were tao costly toimplement. In a few countries,such as Mozambique, Uganda andNamibia, the latter part af the1990s and early 2000s was the be-ginning af the development af in-novative land tools that fitted thenew policy frameworks and couldbe used for implementation.

So innovations ean be reeognised al-ready?

Yes, but these innovativeproaches still pose a challenge forus, as we need to find out if theyean be scaled up to give nationalcoverage. Many of these innova-tive approach es have only beenimplemented in either rural arurban areas. Where these are na-tional laws. we need to also applythem to both rural and urbanareas. We need to rigorously eval-uate the existing pilats and appli-cations of these laws to find outwhether they are giving poorpeople security of tenure and weneed to evaluate whether they aregiving women security of ten ure.

i

1Many organisations worldwide have a ,jfoeus on land administration; what ;]about international co-operat -I :1During the evolution from indi- -.:lvidual titling to pro-poar land i"

policies to a few innovative pro- i~poorbland tof 015bemg developed

d, a~.~.E

num er o orgamsahons asi e .~from UN-HABITAT have identi- -tjfied the faet tha t good land policy .,exists but we do not have sufficient;~~pro-poor tools to implement the ~good policy. The World Bank pub- ;i!

'~lished a new land policy, mostly :®

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UN-HABITAT headouarters building i11 Nairobi, Ken)-------------------------------------------------------------1

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al-based. in 2003. UN-HABI-TATand the Warld Bank, ResearchDivision, are working together totry and expand the nurnber ofpro-poor land tools available.Other partners sueh as the Foodand Agrieulture Organization ofthe United Nations (FAO), theSwedish International Develop-ment Cooperation Ageney (Sida)and the United Kin.gdom Depart-ment for International Develop-ment (DFID) are also eoneernedabout this gap. UN-HABITAT andthe World Bank as partners havestarted warking with the Ministryaf Water, Land and Environmentin Uganda to evaluate their innov-ative land tool. for up-sealing andapplieation to urban areas.

Mild multi-disciplinary co-operation;do surveyors have to work with oth-er disciplines!

Definitely. As we all know, land isa crosseutting issue with a rangeaf vested interests and a variety ofdisciplines servieing those inter-ests, and these are arranged in sec-torsoWe have tried to ens ure that abroad range of the stakeholdersare here at the Expert Group Meet-

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ing sueh as government, non-gov-ernmental organisations, urbanand rural private seetor profes-sionals and research institutes,women and men. We have als otried to ensure that there is a rangeof disciplines at the Expert GroupMeeting including social scien-tists, surveyors, lawyers, GIS ex-perts, planners, etc.One of the key aims of thi s ExpertGroup Meeting has been to bringpeople together from a range ofsectors because, for robust landtools. we need to overeome theseboundaries. As a social scientist rhave worked in the land-titlingfield for years in Africa and ob-served the behaviour of key play-ers. There are at least two very dif-

INTERVIEW

tantly, there is generally a landfunction situated at the centralgovernment level in uni tarystates, and at the state ar provin-cial level in federations.Historically there has been muchmore focus on the rural land sectorbecause of the focus on poverty inthe rural sector. This focus has em-anated from an understandingthat the poor in most countries livein rural areas. Nowadays, there ismuch talk about the urbanisationof poverty because of rapid urban-isation rates as rural migrantsmove to the cities.Based on my experience in work-ing with different countries' landadministration systems, J thinkthat the future lies with a concep-

Individualised land titling was not working

ferent groups of people. On theone hand key players who cornefrom a social science, economics,political science, geography back-ground and, on the other hand.those from a land surveying, com-puter science, planning, valua-bon, engineering-type background.Lawyers fall into both groups.Judging from man y forums, thesedifferent key players are still most-ly talking past each other, thoughthis is slowly improving. The de-velopment of pro-poor land tools.where land policy programmesare translated into specific steps tobe taken in individual countries,will require integrated work bythe entire range of key players.Many of us are becoming increas-ingly aware that it is not possibleto change land administra tionsystems by working optimallywithin each sector, but that in-stead we have to wark out opti-mal solutions across the wholeland sectar within the socio-polit-ical context.

A key subject during an FIG regionalconference in Marrakech, Morocco, ayear ago was the urban-rural interre-lationship; what is your opinion on this?

For many people in the land in-dustry there is a huge divide be-tween the urban and rural landsectors. For other people there isno divide, and they are comfort-able working with both. lmpor-

tual approach that treats land,firstly, as a national function and,secondly, in term s of urban orrural. I think that this kind af ap-proach is becoming increasinglyacceptable in international eirclesamong the group where land hasconventionally been divided intourban and rural.One of the key intentions of thisExpert Group Meeting was tobring people together who havebeen working in urban and/orrural areas, at national, city andcommunity level, to try and cross-feed ideas. We also want to showthat there is a lot of commonalitybetween the sectors with regardto land tools. In addition, we wantto learn from innovations in thedifferent sectors so that they eanbe tried in other sectars. For ex-arnple, the innovations in Ugandaand Mozambique have beeri ap-plied in the rural land sector andwe would be very keen to seehow they can be adapted to theurban land sector.Finally, this Expert Group Meetingis about taking ideas and seeinghow we ean use them to deliverpro-poor land tools for tenure se-curity for the poor, especially the72% of people living in slums inurban sub-Saharan Africa. +

01' Clarissa Augustinus, UN-HABI-rAT,ro. Bax 30030, Nairobi, Kenya,e-mail: clarissa.augustinueeamhabitat.arg

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