LAND MANAGEMENT AND LAND REFORM IN CADASTRAL SURVEYING

LAND MANAGEMENT AND LAND REFORM IN CADASTRAL SURVEYING

   Land management is the process by which the resources of land are put to good effect. It covers all activities concerned with the management of land as a resource both from an environmental and from an economic perspective.

  It can include farming, mineral extraction, property and estate management, and the physical planning of towns and the countryside. It embraces such matters as:

·         Property conveyancing, including decisions on mortgages and investment;

·         Property assessment and valuation;

·         -The development and management of utilities and services;

·         The management of land resources such as forestry, soils, or agriculture;

·         The formation and implementation of land-use policies;

·         Environmental impact assessment; and

·         The monitoring of all activities on land that affect the best use of that land.

   One of the most important steps in the transition from a centrally planned to a market economy is the establishment of private ownership in land. For investment to take place, the investors must feel confident that the assets that they are developing will be built on land to which there is a secure title.

    There must be a clear and rigid framework of laws governing the ownership and rights to use the land. Good land resource management will help to promote economic and social development in both urban and rural areas. For countries in transition, land reform is a key component in achieving these goals. The term “land reform” has a variety of meanings. It may involve the restoration of land rights to previous owners, a process known as land restitution.      This occurred in countries in transition when former private rights in land were restored. Land reform may involve the redistribution of land rights from one sector to another-for example by taking land from the State or from individual owners of large estates and giving it to people who have no land.

    Land reform may also involve land consolidation in which all landowners within an area surrender their land and are allocated new parcels of comparable value but in ;I pattern that encourages the more efficient and productive use of the land. Land reform may also involve changes in the tenure of the land, that is in the manner in which rights are held, thus abolishing complex traditional and customary rights and introducing more simple and streamlined mechanisms of land transfer.

    The impact on the land may be preplanned, but it may also result from property tax reforms

that alter the value of land and in consequence its use.

   Land reform programmes normally affect selected areas such as agricultural land or urban centers’. In rural areas the programmes may be designed to facilitate changes in the technology of agriculture, the type of crops, the manner of husbanding the land, the financing of development or the marketing of products. In urban areas land reform programmes may involve major infrastructure development, the taxation of buildings as well as the land upon which they stand, or changes to the manner and use of land and properties.

   Thus “land reform” covers a multitude of possible activities, not all of which may occur in any given reform programme

Land administration

   The term “land administration” is used in these Guidelines to refer to the processes of

recording and disseminating information about the ownership, value and use of land and

its associated resources.

   Such processes include the determination (sometimes known as the “adjudication”) of rights and other attributes of the land, the survey and description of these, their detailed documentation and the provision of relevant information in support of land markets.

   In this context, land administration is only concerned with such matters as town and country planning or good agricultural practice in so far as such activities affect the compilation and maintenance of good land records.

    These Guidelines address only the sup-porting information infrastructure and are not directly concerned with physical planning, city centre redevelopment, agricultural reform, or improvements to agricultural productivity.

   An understanding of the broader aspects of land management is essential to proper land information management but is not its essence. Land administration is concerned with three commodities-the ownership, value and use of the land-within the overall con-text of land resource management.

   “Value” has several meanings. It may refer to the actual or assessed capital market value, i.e. the amount of money for which the land can be sold, or it may refer to the rental value, which is the amount for which the land can be hired out. Alternatively, “value” may be equated with construction costs, so that the value of a building for insurance purposes may be the cost of rebuilding if it were destroyed by fire.

   The perceived value of land and property may also relate not to any present market price but to the potential to generate income. Thus vacant land would produce more income if it were fully developed and hence by taxing the potential value rather than the present actual value it may be possible to bring about changes in land use.

    The use of the land determines the wealth that it generates and hence its value. In many of the countries in transition a free market in land has in the past been limited or non-existent. In some, such as Poland, a market in rural land remained throughout the communist period but urban land was subject to strict State control; in others, such as Bulgaria, urban property could be purchased (at a price dictated by the Government) but farm land was administered under a cooperative system with no individual person able to own land for agricultural use.

   In such countries, the value of land has been taken to refer to its physical and environmental

qualities. Land records have been compiled listing the soil characteristics, moisture content, slope and aspect of the land, all factors that would influence how the land could best be used. Data on such attributes underpinned various categories of cadastre which were in effect records of existing or potential land use.

    In several countries in transition there have been different cadastres for agricultural land, forest land, viniculture. water resources, etc., as well as a general “unified” cadastre that attempted to integrate data on all of these. In many cases, the mapping in support of these cadastres was on a smaller scale than that now needed for fiscal or juridical purposes.

   In most countries in transition, the cadastral data were further reduced to a generalized form and used to monitor agricultural- production. Statistical data were compiled and sent to a higher authority to support the central planning system, but their use at the detailed level of individual farm management was almost non-existent.

   Where generalized data are required, sampling may be a more cost-effective way to achieve the necessary support for decision-making. Comprehensive information at the individual farm level is necessary only when it directly affects the individual farmer. The European Union, for example, requires such data in order to calculate and pay subsidies to farmers under its Common Agricultural Policy. In most cases it is the farmer on the ground who knows best how to cultivate the land