Anticipating the Impacts of Land Registration Programmes

Abstract

Land administration in the developing world currently focuses on land adjudication, land titling and land registration programmes for deriving economic, social and environmental benefits. Land registration programmes have consequently been instituted in much of Latin America, the Caribbean and the transitional states of Eastern Europe. The process by which land registration programmes lead to these benefits is impacted by a range of local factors. Hence, the potential of achieving these benefits requires the design of a process that suits the local socio-economic environment. Preparatory work for the proposed Land Adjudication and Registration Programme (LARP) in Trinidad and Tobago acquired baseline survey data as a precursor to eventual periodic assessment of the impact of the programme. Current land tenure status was assessed in relation to the following socio-economic factors: location, gender, ethnicity and household income. These values would be used to evaluate whether positive land tenure related effects are being achieved by the land registration programme.This paper presents the results of the baseline study that was conducted to theoretically anticipate positive impacts of LARP. Major impact indicator values found in the sample were that (i) only 34% of the sampled households possessed formal tenure, (ii) formal tenure ranged from a low 2% in one sampled area, (iii) only 32% of the low income group sampled possessed formal tenure, and (iv) only 27% of the female headed households sampled possessed formal tenure.