The Social Tenure Domain Model: a Specialisation of LADM towards bridging the Information Divide1

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon declares that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have been the most successful global anti-poverty ‘push’ in history and that the number of people living in extreme poverty has now been halved (United Nations 2013). This is indeed good news. However, the challenge on poverty reduction is still very significant. In the UN-Habitat’s published State of the World’s Cities (2010/2011), it was highlighted that slum population is expected to increase to 1.4 billion by 2020. IFAD (2011) pointed out that despite significant progress in reducing poverty particularly in East Asia – there are still about 1.4 billion people living on less than US$1.25 a day, and close to 1 billion people are suffering from hunger. While there are various key strategies and interventions in addressing poverty reduction, and sustainable development in general, land governance initiatives are increasingly becoming critically important. In this context, the development of reliable land information systems becomes strategic and useful to bridge the information divide. The Global Land Tool Network and its more than 55 international partners has been developing pro-poor and gender sensitive land policies, tools and approaches and one of them is the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM). STDM is based on a global standard called the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) and supports the recognition of the continuum of land rights approach. It is intended to promote security of tenure of the poor, women and vulnerable groups but increasingly recognized as an important land governance tool. This paper will provide the rationale and framework of STDM development, its current and potential applications and its future development plans. It will also highlight the STDM pilot in Uganda particularly the lessons learned and experiences and how the pilot is influencing the replication and scaling up of STDM in other countries as well as in different contexts or thematic areas. As a way of conclusion, the paper will confirm that STDM as a pro-poor land governance tool and a new way of thinking, is already on its way to bridge the gap in addressing the land information requirements of the urban and rural poor