Weblog owner: Prof. Dr. Holger Magel

I have just returned from the 7th FIG Regional Conference, held in Hanoi, Vietnam. The conference provided a good forum for all regarding the way forward concerning the various challenges facing us today. We had particularly productive deliberations and discussions on issues concerning “Spatial Data Serving People: Land Governance and the Environment - Building the Capacity” and I believe that now is the time to continue the work with much more engagement. In my presentation at the conference, I called for “the need for establishing a global academic partnership” as capacity building in land management. The received responses were overwhelming, and while I appreciate the positive responses I got for my proposal, I must acknowledge Chris Paresi’s presentation on the same issue which brought much value to the general discussion on GAP. I am happy to know that there are other colleagues who understand that the time has come for such efforts. As everybody knows, FIG has a lot of academic members but unfortunately they are neither cooperating nor maintaining a network, nor appear very much visible at the FIG events. The UN agencies and the World Bank are presently much more dominating. We therefore need a GAP – so, my message in Hanoi. This is important because the academics and academic institutions serve as the first step for education and serve as a strong medium for the information sharing and training that leads to the building of capacities.

Now, I want to seize the opportunity this blog affords me to reiterate once more that this is the moment for us to establish a global academic partnership. I passionately believe that building capacities for result-oriented land management, land governance and all other issues on land have never been in higher demand than as it appears to be today. Preparing future surveyors, land managers and all the relevant professionals in the land-related profession demands an international environment as part of the measure for equipping young professionals with the necessary knowledge they need for tackling issues from a global perspective. This can be achieved by ensuring that professionals in land think globally, while acting locally within their different areas of work in their different countries. To achieve this, there is need for collaboration between academic institutions and networks at international level in which the partner institutions or network members share their own experiences, knowledge and capital (financial, social or technical); and undertake a collaborative approach with a view to accomplishing the goal of capacity building within the land sector. This entails identifying the right partner institutions and the processes of intervention by focusing on the development of institutional and professional educational policies to proactively enhance all aspects of land (e.g. land administration, etc), especially in developing countries. And please, let us bear in mind that GAP is not about partners from rich countries telling developing countries’ partners what to do. This is about creating a chance for partners from developing countries to put in place policies that will enable their countries develop sustainably in their different land-sector efforts. It should be a kind of harmonization of efforts and resources to achieve a common goal.

From experience, it is clear that with a well coordinated global academic partnership, the universities and the research organizations will not only deliver results to the partner organizations but also learn from every activity and gain the local-context experiences in the relevant fields of their partner organizations. This leads to a transformation of local knowledge to the global level, vice versa. This could finally lead to the reduction or elimination of the gap between existing capacities and those actually required. I can authoritatively assert that by carrying out target-oriented capacity building measures through global academic partnership; international, national and local academic and professional institutions would begin to operate with more context-oriented curricula in land studies.

So, there is need to create a working group on GAP in FIG. For best start-off and sustainable results, I propose a GAP Working Group, possibly within FIG, that should be constructed or started on the basis of SIX MAIN INTERRELATED TARGETS - Development of management capacity of partner institutions, Curricula development on land issues, Exchange of partner’s network, Joint Research, Mobilization of financial resources; and Exchange of Knowledge, lecturers and Students. I have presented these facts at the just concluded 7th FIG Regional Conference Hanoi and hope that action would be taken to adopt global academic partnership as a major strategy for enhancing capacity building within the surveying and land management profession. This is the moment to establish GAP –the time to do the right things at the right time.

For more information, visit www.landentwicklung-muenchen.de .