Principles of Land Administration

Principles of Land Administration: Their Role in Development

Land administration, when done properly, can play a huge role in the improvement of the citizens’ access to various opportunities. It includes the distribution of land rights which is a strong motivator in improving productivity and investments on a local and domestic level.

The understanding of the principles of land administration is incredibly essential in today’s time because it brings different advantages for both – the government and landowners. In this blog, we will talk about the role of land administration in the development of a region.

principles of land administration

Land Management Systems and Their Long-term Advantages

Take a look at the following benefits of better land administration systems that follow the principles of land management –

Helping Women with Greater Economic Opportunities
Surveys have shown that women who have secured their land rights are able to attain greater income and can equip themselves better to feed their families and deal with domestic violence.

In other words, there are lots of positive changes that are brought by providing women the right to access, use, manage, transfer, remove, succeed, and make various other decisions about their land and associated resources, especially when they know what is security of tenure. These include vastly improving their earning opportunities, their control over domestic income and expenditure, and their general decision-making capacity.

Decreasing Conflict and Ecological Deterioration

When land rights are secured, they strengthen several land management aspects through various sectors such as farming, accommodation, conveyance, and energy. This is because the land is a vital resource in each of these sectors.

land measurement equipment

In the private sector especially, clear, secure, and transferable land rights play a huge role in land development. Unambiguous land rights and accurate land measurement equipment also reduce conflict and bring down the amount of environmental deterioration.

Securing Indigenous People’s Rights

Despite the growing knowledge of the relation of land tenure problems regarding food security, swift gentrification, climate alteration, and the rights of the indigenous population, almost three-quarters of the population does not own appropriate land titling.

To overcome this situation, the UN has included land rights in its Sustainable Goals list. Its links to poverty eradication, women’s empowerment, food security, and gender equality are explicitly mentioned along with multiple implicit links to other goals, which can be achieved through the right land management systems.

How the Principles of Land Administration can be Applied

Land related concerns are highly complicated, which means that the right practices may vary based on context.

After experiencing a wide range of land issues through the decades, it has been found that the best way to handle such problems is through standalone systems that follow the requisite principles of land administration, rather than land modules in multifaceted operations.

However, even when distinct land operations are considered, there are certain steps to be taken in order to enable better performance, as uncovered by IEG reviews. These are the following –

● Land projects need to be built in using a structure that enables sequential enhancements to the legal framework as well as various policies. As time passes, different land management improvements and infrastructural modifications along with incremental updates to human resource capacity also need to be made.

● It takes several steps and procedures in order to secure land tenure as it is not a sole event. This is why instead of overloading a single operation, each and every section of land administration must be paid attention to.

● For implementing effective land management systems in the right way, they need a medium to long term commitment. To achieve this, the implementers should set realistic goals and expectations after considering the capacity of a single project, and design their project accordingly.

● Land concerns address several development objectives but underpinning land alone is not enough if wider development goals have to be met. Given this, non-land aspects may require reforms as well, which they must receive despite any challenges along the way.

● Instead of having all the activities targeted in a single operation, having parallel operations for individual activities is more manageable in a majority of cases.