TS 6A – Case Studies on Land Administration Projects in Asia and the Pacific

Recent FIG keynote addresses stated that equity and good governance in access to land and property rights equates to freedom from want, the basis for peace and solving of conflicts, and the basic platform for poverty reduction (Enemark 2006, Töpfer 2006). As a favourable policy for development by a number of major donors and finance institutions, the integration of cadastral surveying and land registration services is recognised as both strategic and essential for improving the livelihoods of societies living in developing countries. Land management and land administration reform is a common approach in the mobilisation of a fundamental resource – land – so that it can provide a foundation for sustainable and socially equitable economic development. No country’s context and issues are replicated elsewhere and so neither are reform designs and approaches. However, in the complex environment of land administration systems, while solutions may not be the same, a common framework can be applied for assessing the situation and identifying areas of improvement using guiding principles. Using this framework for comparison helps to identify areas of effective and efficient land administration systems and vice versa. Key lessons learnt and trends that appear in these comparisons are useful for shaping reform strategies. Using a set of recently developed comparative indicators and guiding principles this paper analyses regional experiences i