Climate change and tenure insecurity in small island developing states

This year’s International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) Working Week in Christchurch, New Zealand, focused on “Recovery from Disaster”. Having experienced significant earthquakes in recent years, the city was well placed to host this event and showcase how the local population has innovated and adapted in the face of so much destruction.

Ethiopia is one of the most rapidly urbanising countries in the world and is in a unique position to capitalise on the economic opportunities of this transformation.

Our Managing Director, Tony Burns, spent two weeks in Palestine during July/August together with two local consultants, Hiba Husseini and Mohammad Awwad, to assist the Prime Minister’s Office to prepare a comprehensive road map for the Palestinian Land Sector. The Road Map will outline legal and institutional reforms necessary to improve tenure security and stimulate economic growth, and will be a key enabler of the National Policy Agenda 2017-2022.

From 21-23 June 2016, Hanoi, Viet Nam hosted the first international land governance event in the Mekong Region: the Regional Land Forum. This highly participatory and regionally representative forum enabled debates and discussions to occur about customary land rights and large scale land concessions in the context of ASEAN Economic Integration. This unique opportunity allowed a real sense of engagement to develop and grow during the event between multi-stakeholder groups of participants. This was largely a result of quality presentations being held and the audience being receptive and responsive throughout the forum.

The delegation was headed by the Hon. Minister Daudi Migereko and Permanent Secretary Musoke Gabindadde who were accompanied by Nadege Orlova of IGN International of France – the company responsible for the World Bank-funded Design Supply and Implementation of a Land Information System project.

The Mekong Region Land Governance (MRLG) project recently held its second round of stakeholder and consultation workshops with regional partners from Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam.

From the first quarter of 2016, LEI will provide technical support to DAI on this project. The project is part of the FTF initiative which sits under a five-year umbrella contract referred to as: Strengthening Tenure and Resource Rights (STARR).

LEI has been working in Tanzania since 2005 under various contracts to the World Bank to support land reform activities under the Private Sector Competitiveness Project (PSCP) and, more recently, to support the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania (GoT) to prepare the Strategic Plan for Implementation of Land Laws (SPILL, 2013). Our experiences in Tanzania have exposed us to development pressures on land – particularly in rural areas – resulting from rapid population growth, growing demand for agricultural commodities, and increasing government and private sector demand for access to land for large scale agricultural investment. Most recently, LEI has established a team of advisers to support the major Land Tenure Support Programme (LTSP).

In December 2015, LEI finalised contract negotiations to the value of USD4.2m for the second project in a series of sub-activities under the MCA-I Participatory Land Use Planning Activity (PLUP). The PLUP is one of four activities making up the Green Prosperity Project (see http://gp.mca-indonesia.go.id/en/). The PLUP activity focuses on investments in administrative boundary setting, updating and integrating land use inventories and enhancing spatial plans at the district and provincial levels.

Towards the end of 2015, LEI completed the five-year DFAT-funded Vanuatu Land Program. The Program was a long-term commitment by the Government of Vanuatu (GoV) in land sector reform initiatives that aimed to support the Land Sector Framework through improved decision making, making land transactions more transparent, and improving land management procedures and practices (and in doing so, minimise the potential for conflict over land matters).