Good governance in land administration

1. Good governance in land administration

2. Why action is needed • Rents from land are large and increasing • Benefits from natural resource extraction • Non-agricultural land, urbanization, • Land transactions and demand for admin. services • Ways to capture rents are manifold • Large scale land-grabs, public-land concessions to cronies • Land conversion and zoning • Petty corruption in service delivery • Rent-seeking by the judiciary • Implications serious, inequitable, hurt economic performance • Investors complaining about access to land • TI indicators of customers (land sector most corrupt) • But the poor are much more adversely • Social unrest and strife • And if not embedded in a good governance framework, projects may fail

3. Why there is potential • Governance is no longer off the table • Broad acceptance of general principles • Work by partners (FAO Guidelines, GLTN seminars) • Focus on accountability of institutions & officials • Technology as an enabler • Widespread access to information (hiding difficult) • Reduces the cost of improving governance (paper trail, completeness) • Improves scope for monitoring by users (case tracking) • External enforcement mechanisms • Global conventions • Scope for reinforcement through market mechanisms • Shift from project to program support & policy-based lending • Private sector standards

4. What is needed to make progress? • Translate general principles into land issues • Policy principles • Institutions & effectiveness of service delivery • Derive indicators to measure these • Reach consensus/methodology on indicators measurement • Aggregate/typical outcomes (Doing Business as a model) • Routine administrative information: Outreach & efficiency in supply • Customer satisfaction: Extent to which demand is satisfied • Close the feedback loop by highlighting links to policy • Establish link between actions and indicators • Examples of policy or institutional change • What was the impact on indicators • How were political economy constraints dealt with • Impact of shortcomings & bottlenecks • Integrate these into conceptual framework for focus countries

5. Policy principles I • Land policy is in line with principles of fairness & equity • No gender, ethnic, racial discrimination/restrictions on land ownership or use • Principles of (historical) equity addressed without undermining other ways of land access & in a way that is cost effective compared to alternatives • Policy reform processes conducted in a participatory manner, contributing to a common vision & with clear benchmarks • A variety of accepted & socially legitimate rights is legally recognized & can be recorded • Legal recognition of communal/customary, collective, private, public, religious rights • Boundaries of tenure regimes are defined in a way that is verifiable at low cost • Mechanisms to make transition between regimes available • Main tenure regimes & associated rights well understood by those affected • System to record rights operational, up to date, covering significant shares of each type • Unrealistic standards/administrative constraints do not impede ability to register rights

6. Policy principles II • Limitations on exercise of rights (incl. planning & taxation) least-cost provision of public goods • Land use planning is in line with need and done in a participatory way • Zoning restrictions justified by external effects, determined in a transparent & participatory way & in line with enforcement capacity • Valuations done in transparent, objective, uniform equitable objective • Property taxes in line with broad principles, collected effectively & equitably • Whatever limitations on transferability of land exist are justified by imperfections in other markets • No restrictions on subdivisions • Transferability of land through rental is unrestricted • Restrictions on transferability through sale are temporary and justified by malfunctioning of other markets or knowledge gaps.

7. Institutional environment I • Land admin. institutions have clear mandates & operate in a transparent, cost-effective, and sustainable fashion • Institutional responsibilities at different administrative levels are clearly assigned, well defined and do not overlap • Standards of professional and personal integrity in place & enforced throughout • Service delivery standards publicized & adhered to and mechanisms to enforce them available • Institutions for land administration has financially and technically sustainable • Land institutions widely accessible & provide services cost-effectively • Management, acquisition & disposal of public land follow clear procedures that are applied transparently • Inventory of public lands, including the returns from them, is available • Public land is managed transparently & efficiently • Acquisition and holding of land by the public sector is limited to the public purpose • Public land is released to the private sector in a transparent way and without large subsidies • Partial or full expropriation of land under eminent domain is limited to immediate public use and accompanied by fair compensation (including resettlement where needed).

8. Institutional environment II • Accessible (judicial & non-judicial) institutions manage conflicts and resolve disputes fairly and expeditiously • Land owners/users have access to institutions that are empowered to manage conflicts expeditiously and transparently • Responsibility to resolve different types of conflict is clearly assigned • Appeals mechanisms are available and accessible to those aggrieved in a non-discriminatory way • The share of land sterilized because of conflict is low & decreasing • Information provided by the land administration system is reliable, sufficient, and accessible at reasonable cost

9. Status and next steps • Case study countries identified • Indonesia, Kyrgiz Republic, Peru, Tanzania, Burkina • Revision and discussion of conceptual framework • To include economic perspective & assessment of policies • Lessons from case study countries (negative and positive) • Agreement on indicators and of a methodology to assess them • Administrative & effectiveness of service delivery • Customer satisfaction & biases in access (comparing to representative data) • Key processes to be tracked and methodology for doing so (incl. regional variation) • Review by peer reviewers and Bank staff • Feed into a concept note for ESW • Circulation within Bank and with other partners • Implementation of country case studies • In coordination with others • Governance initiative by UN-Habitat/GLTN • Towards a voluntary code of conduct for governance jointly with FAO