Land Tenure Information Research Articles

住宅、土地所有、社会的要因からみた４地区の比較考察によるアフガニスタン、カブール市非正規市街地特性の検討

The urban population of developing countries is increasing rapidly. A result disturbing trend is the proliferation of informal housing development in most cities. Similarly, Kabul as one of those fast-growing cities has witnessed rapid urbanization with the many inevitable challenges including, the manifestation of informal settlements. Again, the limited capacity of the government to meet the high demand for building plots has led to growth of the informal settlements. This paper attempts to analyze the characteristics and conditions of phenomena of informal settlements in Kabul city, in order to assist in formulating and designing the most appropriate planning and policy strategies for their improvement. The paper found that the Informal settlements are mainly characterized by informal land tenure, inadequate access to basic urban services, substandard housing, and structures. Again, most of the residents in the surveyed areas were owner-occupiers rather than tenants as the land had been bought from local landholders or powerful individuals who had grabbed the undeveloped land and sold it at a very low price. Contrary to popular perception, residents comprised not only poor but also middle and higher income earners in the city.

Migrants, land markets and carbon emissions in Jambi, Indonesia: Land tenure change and the prospect of emission reduction

Policies designed to reduce land-based carbon emissions require a good understanding of the complex connections between state-sanctioned concessions, forest conversion, informal land markets and migrants. Our case study in the peat forests of the Tanjung Jabung Barat (TanJaBar) regency of Jambi, Indonesia aimed to explore relations between four key stakeholder groups: the state, local communities, migrants, and state-sanctioned concessions. We hypothesized that current land use patterns are shaped by insecurity in formal forest tenure alongside informal land tenure arrangements with migrants. In analyzing the six two-way relationships between the four stakeholder groups, we found that interactions between the stakeholders have changed local norms and practice, causing land conflicts and contested claims that need to be explicitly addressed in efforts to reduce carbon emissions in TanJaBar. Relational concepts of land rights between migrants and local community leaders are informed by social identity, expectations of investment opportunities, insecure customary forest tenure and competing land use policies. Migrants act as intermediaries in shaping the land tenure system and shift the balance of power between local communities, the state, and business concessions. We conclude that effective and equitable implementation of national Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation+ (REDD+) programs will need to recognize underlying land ownership dynamics, power struggles and strategic positioning among stakeholders across scales. Obtaining free and prior informed consent (FPIC) from all relevant stakeholders is a major challenge given this complexity. Low emission development strategies will require recognition of a reality beyond large-scale concessions and traditional local communities.

The Case Study Method in Examining Land Registration Usage

The case study method is appropriate for examining how and why landholders choose to use or not use land registration to effect transactions after first registration. The paper covers two related approaches to building theory that explains land registration usage behaviour. The methodologies may be extended to examining usage of other forms of land tenure information system (LTIS). Land titling and registration projects have proliferated in the developing world since World War II, often motivated by the theory that economic benefits will flow from the capital vested in the land that is freed up as a consequence of registration. Many of these projects fail to produce the desired results because the intended beneficiaries do not register transactions after first registration. Surprisingly, few studies investigate the reasons for the failure of land titling projects from the perspective of the intended beneficiaries. The case study method is suited to examine the strategies that landholders use to secure transactions. The advantages of case studies are that they may include all the data the researcher deems relevant, they emphasise the local context, and certain phenomena may be examined more deeply than other methods of inquiry allow. In case studies, researchers can examine issues at the grassroots level while at the same time incorporating the influences of local politics, social change, land administration agency behaviour and the influence of local and national law and policy.

A change based framework for theory building in land tenure information systems

The paper presents a framework for categorising and assessing theories in land tenure information systems (LTIS) to improve coherence and critical rigour in LTIS theory development. The LTIS research area is dominated by the land titling theory which holds that land titles provide tenure security, which therefore may serve as collateral for credit and thus stimulate economic activity. However, this hypothesis is not valid in many instances. Alternatives to the land title theory are isolated due to the predominance of case study research in the area, the small number of researchers focused on LTIS as a research area and the difficulty in testing these alternative theories with empirical evidence, because many of them are not expressed in a form that renders them suitable for testing. In the framework, theories are examined according to the context of the situations an LTIS is meant to serve, within which the most significant variable is the level of change or uncertainty. A taxonomy of theory presented in library information science is adapted to assess the level at which a theory may be generalised in a particular context type and linked to the framework. One way of estimating a theory’s level of general applicability is the number of times it has been validated empirically in different contexts. The framework should serve as a visualisation and analytical tool to stimulate the development of a more rigorous theoretical foundation for these information systems. The present paper is of primary interest to land administration and land information researchers, but it also has important implications for practitioners.

Changing Land Tenure Arrangements and Access to Primary Assets under Globalization: A Case Study of Two Villages in Anglophone Cameroon

Abstract: This paper illustrates how, in relation to globalization, formal and informal land institutions are prone to generate conflict over land rights and examines the implications of such conflicts on security levels of access to primary assets for the poor in two villages in Cameroon — Vekovi and Ekona. The land laws in Cameroon are an outcome of its colonial heritage and exist alongside the communal tenure system. As the issue of land awareness comes to the fore, engendered partly by population pressure, relative price changes and the commoditization of land, conflicts develop: farmer–grazer conflicts in Vekovi, and farmer–farmer and indigenous people–state conflicts in Ekona. The rent‐seeking attitude of administrative and judicial authorities, who use inconsistencies in the dual tenure system, reduces the possibility of negotiating lasting solutions to land‐related conflicts in these villages. The social cost of this behaviour is not limited only to mutual distrust but also includes the opportunity costs of both time and financial resources mobilized by the parties in conflict to follow‐up legal procedures. The informal land tenure system generally operates in opposition to the national land laws in our case study villages, an atmosphere that generates or exacerbates conflict situations that create insecurity and restrict productivity‐enhancing investments. Land markets are more buoyant in Ekona, which is relatively more cosmopolitan and with farm‐to‐market roads that are fairly developed, than in Vekovi, which experiences net out‐migration and is poorly accessible. As a more homogenous society with strong traditional conventions, land transfer in Vekovi remains biased in favour of males, while Ekona enjoys gender neutrality in access to land. Conflict adjudication in the case study villages would be more legitimate if both formal and informal interpretations inform the land dispute settlement mechanisms.

Video evidencing and palmtop computer technology to support the formalisation of land rights

Technology can be used to improve the legitimacy, accuracy and currency of land tenure information in urban informal settlements, site-and-service schemes and rural land restitution cases. Video images of landholders providing testimony as to their rights, interests and obligations regarding land, and palmtop computers using icon-based graphic interfaces, are two such technologies. Video imaging has the advantage that respondents can describe unusual situations in the tenure system on camera that might not normally be recorded in a written document, and thus improve the completeness of the record. Palmtop computers that can be used by community members to collect socio-economic data are one of many tools that enable a community to work in partnership with the land administration authorities to improve the quality of land records. This article describes pilot studies of how video images were integrated into a geographic information system with spatially referenced socio-economic data collected with a palmtop computer linked to a hand-held Garmin II Plus receiver. These studies were conducted as a part of a research programme in land tenure and cadastral systems in a rural community and an urban informal settlement.