Rescuing land administration projects from isolation

When it comes to achieving successful land administration sector reforms, development partners face considerable challenges, such as a lack of ongoing political support, limited access to resources, and aid being diverted to other sectors. However, innovative intervention strategies to overcome these challenges are emerging. This article identifies opportunities for improving intervention approaches that are being driven by wider policy agendas and technology.

Over the past decade there have been both negative and positive changes to the land administration reform landscape. The current regional conflicts, such as in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the aftermath of other conflicts are rightly attracting significant levels of humanitarian aid. This has reduced the level of aid for lower-priority sectors, such as land administration, resulting in fewer standalone land projects. Some nations that have traditionally been generous in their foreign aid in the land sector have been cutting back. The UK, Norway and most recently USA are examples.

Access to appropriate funding has become a serious issue. The approach to financing projects, either through loans or aid, has not changed. Financing is still focused on upfront capital investments. There is normally no revenue component included for maintenance, and this often leads to poor project sustainability. This is further compounded by funding being unavailable for the entire duration of country programmes that can last ten years or more. These programmes have to be segmented and interrupted, typically into three to five-year bites. This leads to discontinuities and potential impacts due to changes in political leadership and support.

Under-performing land administration projects

Moreover, not all interventions by development partners have been successful. This has left a legacy of risk surrounding land administration reforms that has impacted and reduced the level of aid in this sector. Political support for reforms is often weakened due to these perceived risks, the considerable duration of projects that normally complete outside the political election cycle, and land administration projects not being recognized as supporting the key policy agendas. This poor political support often leads to very limited reforms in governance, institutions and the legal frameworks necessary to underpin successful projects.

Resourcing is also an inherent problem in reform projects. There is difficulty in retaining staff, especially with IT skills, and access to international experience and skills in land administration is increasingly more difficult to obtain. The number of universities across the world providing degrees or continued professional development (CPD) for land professionals has significantly reduced. This decline in capacity has resulted in fewer land administration projects and poorer-quality outcomes. Poor programme/contract management skills are often linked to overly ambitious goals leading to disastrous projects. At a higher level, recipient countries are also confused by the mixed reform messages and approaches being proposed by different UN agencies and development partners. These failed and under-performing projects have lessened the enthusiasm of development partners to fund these types of projects. Instead they prefer ‘less risky’ projects in education and civil society, for example.

Despite these challenges, there have also been some notable successes in land administration reforms over the last 30 years. Examples include the World Bank’s reforms in the post-communist period in Europe and Central Asia, UK’s Ethiopia programme, major forest land tenure projects triggered by COP 26, and the widespread adoption of the fit-for-purpose land administration (FFPLA) methodology that is accelerating reforms, as successfully demonstrated by Rwanda and Indonesia.

Opportunities for change

There are a number of innovative intervention options that can be adopted – perhaps in combination – by development partners to achieve more effective land administration reforms.

Adopt a politically informed approach

Land administration reform projects aligned with a country’s political economy – i.e. how politics affects the economy, and how the economy in turn shapes politics – have a much higher degree of success. Rather than standalone land administration projects that do not directly interest the politicians, projects can be directly aligned with the political agenda and policies, such as climate change mitigation and adaption, infrastructure and city resilience. This can have significant and very positive impacts.

Political economy-based approaches are adaptive rather than prescriptive and initially learn through multi-stakeholder pilot projects that engage with a range of stakeholders, including citizens. This is similar to the analogy of the ‘agile’ software development methodology. Many projects have typically failed because they have been too ambitious and idealistic. Instead, the scope and complexity need to be much more realistic, mirroring another software development approach: the minimum viable product (MVP). Once delivered and fully operational, the simpler solution can then be enhanced over time. In this political economy context, the change agents are coalitions, networks and leaders rather than the traditional approach involving officials and technical advisors.

New entry points

Rather than being classified as standalone projects, land administration projects should find new entry points as integral parts of the wider, priority policy agenda. Attractive entry points are larger policy-driven programmes such as climate change mitigation and adaption, city resilience, land for renewables, marine/land integration or marine cadastre. Land administration can just be a component of these programmes.

Increasingly, investments in key registers (authoritative and dynamically updated information about people, businesses and land and property) to support digital transformation are successful entry points for land administration projects. Remember that land rights is a fundamental theme of national spatial data infrastructure (NSDI) and the UN-GGIM Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (IGIF) – another effective entry point. New revenue generation opportunities through property taxes are popular with local governments and ministries of finance, making them another very successful entry point.

Rather than solely engaging with the relevant land department, development partners should explore innovative new touch points in the country, such as the Earth observation agency, ministry of finance or statistical agency. This approach can potentially accelerate and apply more effective pressure for change.

Integrated multi-faceted projects

To leverage the economic potential of their land and property, citizens need not just land tenure – they need a portfolio of services. The incremental and fragmented delivery of this portfolio of technical and financial services makes their sustainable prosperity much more challenging. The FFPLA paradigm and the emerging, enabling technologies provide compelling opportunities to rethink how land administration and land management programmes are designed, integrated and implemented. Research has identified that a common set of geospatial base data, collected by and derived from drone and street-level imagery, can support a wide set of FFPLA services and land management functions, ranging from urban resilience and valuation to land registration and cadastre.

Multi-faceted projects bring together a much wider range of professions than in traditional land administration projects. These newly involved professionals can bring fresh perspectives and add significant value to delivering innovative solutions. This will be achieved through new touch points in a country bringing a rich set of insights into the country’s requirements, allowing more effective solutions to be implemented.

However, development partners often find this more holistic approach difficult to adopt due to their organizational divisions and associated silos of professional skills, the perceived difficulty in managing multi-faceted programmes, and the complexity of interfacing with a range of recipient government ministries and departments. While none of these perceived restrictions are showstoppers, adopting these new approaches will require significant cultural and institutional changes from the development partners.

Project preparation phase

Complex land administration programmes need significant preparation time. This phase can typically take two to five years. In particular, it should include key activities such as engagement with the political economy, capacity development and financial feasibility. Too often in projects, not enough time is spent on the preparatory phase. This significantly increases the corresponding project risks.

Socio-economic impact assessment (SEIA)

Land administration projects rarely have corresponding business cases, and this creates problems when the ministry of finance and the development partner review the project’s financial feasibility. It is therefore recommended that economists are an integral part of the project team and SEIA toolkits are created to support land administration projects. These could be adapted from the World Bank’s established IGIF implementation methodology to support the creation of NSDIs customized to specific countries and priorities. An excellent set of templates and toolkits is available for each of the steps.

Generative AI-driven customer interfaces

The user interface to land administration services is inherently complex, reflecting the intricacy of the legal and regulatory framework underpinning the services. This complexity and the technical language exclude many citizens from these services in developing countries. An article in The Economist highlighted how generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) stands to transform lives in the emerging world through better and more accessible public services. For example, India is combining large language models with speech-recognition software to enable illiterate farmers to ask a ‘bot’ how to apply for government loans.

There is a great opportunity to build a smaller and less expensive GenAI model (not ChatGPT) with a set of capabilities built specifically around land administration services for a country. Allowing direct access for all – without land professionals or trusted intermediaries – to a range of land services, this is a step beyond FFPLA. It is a compelling idea and hopefully can trigger some research.

Realizing the opportunities

The land administration sector is at a turning point in its lifecycle, and we now have a better chance of providing security of tenure for all. This article has identified exciting opportunities that are emerging for development partners to adopt more effective intervention strategies to achieve successful land administration reforms. However, their implementation will have a big impact on development partners and land administration agencies, requiring them to change their culture, develop a new set of skills and establish fresh partnerships. The challenge is there for the taking.

The illustration is taken from the report "Fit-For-Purpose Land Administration for All: A guide for surveyors on adoption and adaptation of Fit-For-Purpose Land Administration", written by Eva-Maria Morscher-Unger and Rohan Bennett (see page 12).

Further reading

1. Third International Land Management Conference in collaboration with University of West England and Land International Network for Knowledge (LINK), March 2024. Abstracts, presentations and PowerPoints, accessed 10 December 2024 https://landinternational.network/3rd-international-land-management-conference-14-15-march-2024#book-of-abstracts
2. Kathrine Kelm, 2024. Extending the World Bank IGIF Methodology into the Marine Domain, accessed 10 December 2024 https://ggim.un.org/meetings/GGIM-committee/12th-Session/side_events/World%20Bank.pdf
3. The Economist, 2024. AI Holds Tantalising Promise for the Emerging World, accessed 11 December 2024 https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/01/25/the-tantalising-promise-of-ai-for-the-emerging-world
4. Kelm, K., Antos, S., McLaren, R., 2021. Applying the FFP Approach to Wider Land Management Functions. Land 2021, 10, 723, accessed 10 December 2024 https://doi.org/10.3390/land10070723
5. Adlington, G., Lamb, T., Tonchovska, R., McLaren, R., 2020. Real Estate Registration and Cadastre, Practical Lessons and Experiences, accessed 13 December 2024 https://gadlandreg.com