News in 2017
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World Bank Land conference: Responsible Land governance, Towards an
Evidence Based Approach
19 - 24 March 2016, Washington DC, USA
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The 18th annual world bank conference on land and poverty was
held on 20-24 March 2017 at the world Head Quarter in Washington
DC.
President Chryssy Potsiou and Vice President Diane Dumashie attended
the World Bank lands conference with a busy schedule of meetings with
key stakeholders, FIG members and also sharing time and deliberations
with FIG commission chairs from Commissions 8 and 9. President
Potsiou was invited speaker at a pre-conference Peer Learning Exchange,
on the 19 and 20th of March. Her presentation was about her
research and FIG/UNECE joint publication on formalization of informal
development in South-east Europe.
www.fig.net/resources/publications/un/2015_formalizing_
the_informal.asp
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This one and a half-day learning exchange engaged GLTN members, Solid
Ground campaign partners and Habitat for Humanity, who support
land-based efforts across the globe. GLTN and Habitat for Humanity
co-organized the learning exchange, with campaign partners and GLTN
members.
The week began with a pre-conference reception at the Embassy of
Finland in Washington, March 20. Finland is celebrating its
centennial as an independent country in 2017, and has walked the way
from poverty to an efficient and reliable state. Finland offers a
practical approach to building sustainable, smart solutions to cover
issues from land management to urban development and climate change.
Innovative, state-of-the-art and easy-to-use solutions provided by
Finnish companies deliver solutions to data collection, documentation,
and distribution. As our 2017 FIG working week hosts, it was our
pleasure to share their celebration and meet with experts from the
Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the National Land Survey of Finland, the
National Trade Promotion Agency Finpro, the National Innovation Funding
Agency Tekes, and private companies specialized in modern spatial data
infrastructure.
Reception at the Embassy of Finland in
Washington due to the celebration of its centennial as an
independent country in 2017. Finland is also host of the FIG
Working Week 2017.
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FIG President Potsiou, Director General Arvo Kokkonen, National
Land Survey, Finland and FIG Vice President Dumashie |
The WB Land Conference hosted more than 1,250 participants from over
130 countries, as it continues to help shape the land agenda and
facilitates the building of connections during a wide range of meetings,
roundtables and deliberations relating to the conference theme.
Participants included FIG President C. Potsiou and Vice President D.
Dumashie, Honorary FIG Presidents S. Enemark and R. Foster, FIG
commission 8 and commission 9 chairs K. Tenadu and S. Nystrom, FIG
former Vice President D. Alnaggar, FIG honorary member C. Lemmen, FIG WW
2017 organizing committee from Finland, several FIG experts including
the former FIG Com9 chair K. Viittannen, delegates from various
countries, especially developing countries, government representatives,
academia, NGO's and CSOs, the private sector and world bank development
partners. The conference theme, underpinned by recognizing responsible
land governance, arises because of the fact that large parts of some
country populations may lack clear rights, documents may be out of date,
and the persistent failure to manage land to maximize social and
economic benefits. Accordingly, the discussions and presentations
considered how to close the gap between reality and legal provisions of
land rights and management for urban and rural development.
Three broad factors were identified and discussed that could close
this gap, and evidenced in the conference forum and papers, they
included:
- New data sources, including drones, and more comprehensive and
regular coverage of land records with imagery that is often free or
made available under new business models,
- better connectivity and
- improvements in the ability to process data.
FIG is a key partner of the GLT Network, who were very much visible
during the week.
President Potsiou participated to the IAB Meeting, held on 20 March, on
the strategic discussion about the future of GLTN. The board agreed to
aim at having a draft Strategy by September 2017. The importance of
improving the GLTN governance structure in a way that will suit the need
of the Phase 3 strategy under development and to allow for inter-cluster
interaction was emphasized.
The President also participated to the Cluster leaders meeting on 24
March, where an update on the implementation of the clusters’ Work Plans
was discussed; cluster updates will be uploaded at the GLTN website.
President Potsiou and VP Dumashie were pleased to participate at a
number of sessions on Land Administration, property taxation, property
valuation and land value capture, value chains, affordable housing,
NSDI, etc, including GLTN platforms sessions, in particular:
Vic President Dumashie participated to the session on, 'Capacity
Building for Scaling Land Administration'; 'Vision for achieving global
land tenure security', this session was particularly interesting given
the VP Dumashie’s previous involvement in the 2016 UN Habitat EGM held
in new York, on 'Land in the New Urban Agenda'; and finally, 'Land
value capture experiences' again this topic deliberated on matters that
FIG (both President Potsiou and Vice President Dumashie) have inputted
at the GLTN EGM held in Sounio, Greece, September 2016.
President Potsiou also chaired the session on “Capacity Building for
Scaling Land Administration”, on 21 March, with very interesting
presentations from International Association of Assessing Officers USA,
LX Korea Land and Geospatial Informatix Corporation, GLTN and
universities of Florida, RMIT of Australia, Ardhi, East London and
Twente, and university of Munich. She then participated to interesting
sessions on establishing NSDI and on quantifying the benefits of it, and
on vision for achieving global land security.
Networking receptions of GLTN partners and on “Towards a New Property
Rights Conversation: PRINDEX closed the day. The Global Property Rights
Index (PRIndex) is a new initiative that uses opinion surveys to measure
and understand perceptions of tenure security, by country, across the
globe. During the meeting the results from PRIndex's first nine
countries were shared at this gallery event.
On 22 March, interesting morning sessions included “Standards for
Land Administration: Ensuring Interoperability”, “Putting Fit for
Purpose Land Administration in Practice”. On 23 March, President Potsiou
gave a presentation on her research on formalizing real estate markets
in European region (with a special focus on Greece, Kosovo and Romania)
at the session “Governance of Real Estate”.
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This research is accomplished within the framework of the FIG Task Force
on Real Estate Markets; the “Innovation Fair: Interoperability & Land
Use Applications” session on March 23 included numerous interesting
papers including a viable approach for decentralized mapping systems
with integrated data validation, data exchange form decentral
organization to a central agency by SLM Land Management Foundation, FIG,
SGS Inc, and the Federal Office of Topography, swisstopo. On 24 March
she participated to the FIG/GLTN/WB Session on “Fit-for-Purpose Approach
to Land Administration in Africa” expressed her acknowledgments to the
authors on behalf of FIG, she also emphasized the importance of land
administration and the need to adopt methods and technologies that will
facilitate a fast, affordable and reliable nation-wide establishment and
maintenance of a system that will help poverty reduction and
development. The President then participated to the session on
presenting the “Guide to the Valuation of Unregistered Land” and shared
ideas with the authors and contributing experts for this important
initiative. The Guide is at its final stage of development and is
expected to be published soon.
The conference concluded with a clear message that building on the
demonstrable capacity of the world bank in analytics, together with its
partners in all regions can evidence and ultimately implement solutions,
noteworthy is the ultimate partner, the politicians. This was
clearly highlighted in the Africa Region, Klaus Deniger of the world
bank was honored to welcome the former President of Nigeria who launched
a newly established African Land Advisory Group (TAfLAG), a
distinguished group of African land professionals who can influence at
the political level, guide and add their collective experience to help
solve African continental issues on behalf of governments and civic
society.
Plenary table with former president, Nigeria in the middle and Klaus
Deiniger, World Bank, to the right
Chryssy Potsiou and Diane Dumashie
30 April 2017
