Land is a fundamental resource for recovery after disaster, providing a site for shelter, a resource for livelihoods and a place for access to services and infrastructure. Secure rights to land are essential to prevent land grabbing and allow reintegration of displaced persons. Land is therefore a matter that cuts across the relief, recovery and development phases of post-crisis ­programming. In 2005 the ­Humanitarian Response Reviewidentified land and property issues as a major gap in the humanitarian response system. In 2007 the Early Recovery Cluster, led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), decided to prepare clear and simple guidelines to support national and international efforts to ­address land, tenure and property ­issues after natural disaster. In response, UN-Habitat and the UN Food and ­Agriculture Organisation (UNFAO) are ­collaborating to prepare a set of guidelines and a toolkit.

FIG President Stig Enemark was ­invited to attend the FAO/UN-Habitat Expert Group Meeting convened to this end and held at the latter’s ­Geneva ­office from 21stto 23rdApril 2008. Paul Munro-Faure, chief of the FAO Land Tenure and Management Unit, and Clarissa Augustinus, chief of the UN-Habitat Land, Tenure and Property Administration initiated the meeting with the aim of:
-ensuring guidelines meet the needs of the humanitarian community in terms of structure and key issues identified
-critically reviewing proposed policy options and recommendations on sequencing interventions
-reviewing draft toolkit structure and proposed contents.

About forty invited experts from the UN Agencies, humanitarian organisations, and the land professions ­participated in the EGM. They discussed the ­issues based on guidelines drafted for ­FAO-UN-Habitat by Daniel Fitzpatrick of the Australian National University. The meeting was very productive. ­A key focus in the discussion groups was the facilitation of mutual understanding between humanitarian factions and land professionals in the early recovery process.

This process describes the traditional phase bridging emergency relief and future sustainable development; early recovery begins in the emergency ­relief phase, builds on humanitarian programming and takes advantage of opportunities for sustainable development. Consultants including David Stanfield, Grenville Barnes and Rob­ert Home provided case-studies, and Home also contributed to the discussions from a land-professional point of view. FIG is considering how best to contribute to addressing land ­issues after natural disasters. This may include a number of activities, ranging from policy development in co-oper­ation with UN agencies to professional support in actual disaster situations in co-operation with other professional organisations.

Workshop Comm. 3
‘Spatial Information for Sustainable Management of Urban Areas’ is the theme of the annual meeting and Workshop of FIG Commission 3, Spatial Information Management, to take place in Germany in February 2009. The workshop aims at studying the economic, social and environmental impact of rapid urban growth, unplanned in many countries. It will use inter­national knowledge and experience ­relating to how surveyors may assist in real-estate markets, good governance, environmental management, and planning initiatives by providing reliable Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). The deadline for submission of abstracts is 6th October 2008. Paper submissions may be sent to gapos@tee.gr.