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LAND AND CONFLICT IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM
By Clarissa Fourie, School of Civil Engineering, Surveying and Construction
University of Natal (Durban), South Africa
Keynote address presented at the 6th South East Asian Surveyors Congress
and 40th Australian Surveyors Congress, November 1st-6th November, 1999,
Freemantle, Australia.
Introduction
The longer I work in land management, the more I come
to understand that much of land management is in fact conflict management.
Because I come from South Africa, and have worked mostly in Africa and
Indonesia, I sometimes think that maybe I think this because of where
I have been working. But last year I gave a paper at the FIG congress
in Brighton at the same time as European surveyors from Holland and Denmark
who were discussing land consolidation, a form of land management popular
in Europe, and they also felt that land management involves extensive
conflict management.
For the last 2 weeks I have been in Australia attending the Bathurst Declaration
and then the Melbourne conference, and also spending 4 days on the fabulous
Barrier Reef. I will be filling you in on some of the issues which came
out of the workshop and conference, as requested by the organizers of
this conference. But I am going to place the findings within the framework
of my topic, that is land and conflict in the new millennium. I will do
this by covering a range of themes:
• I will refer first to the problem statements
that are the point at which the Bathurst Workshop started. That is,
what is going wrong with the planet;
• I will then briefly identify the role of land surveyors in conflict
management just to make you more comfortably from the outset;
• I will then look at different types of conflict and show how
critical the role of land, information and land surveying is and I will
speak about Kosovo and South African informal settlements;
• I will then suggest ways forward for these situations in the
form of a Stakeholders' Forum;
• Another way forward concerns some of the most difficult, useful
and creative discussions which were raised in Bathurst and Melbourne,
namely the expanding of what is known as the cadastral infrastructure
to a land administration infrastructure to accommodate additional non
parcel based rights and information;
• Another new tool which was discussed, but not unpacked to the
same extent, in Bathurst and Melbourne was the issue of managing overlapping
rights in new ways -and I will discuss this in relation to Australia's
native title;
• Finally, I will return to the Bathurst Declaration to draw out
some of the major conclusions and recommendations, which seek to deal
with the issues raised both in the problem statement and in the conflict
which underpins most of the world's land management problems;
The problems
It is always good to start by outlining the problems one is trying to
address, and I will take these problems directly from the Bathurst Deceleration
• The world's population has reached 6 billion;
• The poor are increasingly concentrated in slums and squatter
settlements with 40-60 percent of the occupation of cities in developing
countries being informal, where people have no secure tenure. I will
show you some slides later of informal settlement in South Africa and
how it affects the cadastre and land owners;
• The proportion of people making their living from land is declining.
In 1970 two thirds of the world's population lived in rural areas; today
it is only half, while within 30 years two thirds of the world's population
will live in cities;
• Fresh water availability is approaching crisis point. At present
consumption levels, two-thirds of the world's population will live in
water-stressed conditions by the year 2025;
• Women account for half the world's population but they own only
1 percent of the world's wealth;
Additional figures noted in Bathurst and Melbourne
which illustrate problems and conflicts are that:-
• 90 percent of the world's population own
only 10 percent of the world's wealth, and the concentration of land
in the hands of a few is significant in some of the larger cities in
the world;
• Humans are already exploiting all the available land and fresh
water resources and the picture of plenty which most of us have been
brought up with is no longer a reality. I think this has been brought
home already in Australia over the salination and water issue;
• Also, with the move of the population to the cities and away
from the farms, there are increased water needs both for human consumption
in the cities and for industrial development to replace agricultural
employment. This puts additional stress on the existing water consumption
patterns;
• Finally, a figure from the United Nations on housing indicates
that over one third of the world's urban population lives in informal
housing, generally without services such as clean water, sewerage management
and so on.
A first reaction to these figures might be to go
back to playing golf or to go surfing! It is just all so huge. However,
if the professionals do not become fully involved in solving the problems
who is going to do it.
In fact, when you hear figures likes this it is no wonder that there is
so much conflict in the world. However too often this conflict is not
understood as a conflict over resources, but is seen as a conflict between
political ideologies or personalities or as ethnic or religious differences.
Of course such conflict also exists, but many times it is the conflict
over resources, and access to those resources, which underlie the conflict.
The figures above should indicate to us that rather than conflict diminishing
in the next millennium it will increase because our resource base in shrinking
in terms of the needs of the population. This need is not only about population
growth, but also about consumption patterns, and I might remind you that
one person from the United States has been calculated as consuming the
same amount of the earth's resources in a life time as 60 Ghanians in
West Africa.
The role of the land surveyor
Some people would argue that the land surveyor has
very little role in tackling the issues I have just outlined, perhaps
even a few land surveyors would see it that way as well. I would argue
instead the land surveyors are already involved in these situations and
that they are critical to the resolution of these problems, parcel by
parcel. This is certainly our experience in South Africa. The majority
of the postgrads are practicing registered cadastral surveyors, and there
work every day is in providing information and tenure security to people
who have previously not been able to have access to land or secure tenure
or to land information. I will show you later on overheads some of the
work of one of post grads is doing, who is the Chief Surveyor of a medium
sized town of about half a million people.
So there are a number of roles land surveyors can and do play in conflict
management in relation to land:-
• Firstly, land surveyors tend to create the
information which people need to be able to negotiate -and I will examine
this more just now. The reason for this is that often the cadastral
information is the first or only information available on the land;
• Secondly, land surveyors deliver land and rights. That is, they
know how to access land and how to convert raw land to serviced, developed
land. That is, land surveyors can have a critical role in giving access
to land and secure tenure to the world's population;
• Thirdly, land surveyors have often moved beyond the cadastre
to land information management in the form of GIS. That is, they are
familiar with the range of data sets required to manage land beyond
the cadastral layer. Land and conflict management requires the ability
to visualise and manage overlapping rights. I will return to this controversial
idea just now;
• Fourthly land surveyors understand issues at a larger than community
level, because they are used to working from the whole to the part,
and also understanding the need for land information and cadastral infrastructure
to be long lasting for sustainability and cost effectiveness. In many
situations in the world conflict can only be managed over time, through
the resolution of disputes one by one. The processes whereby this conflict
is managed have to be at the right scale, for example at national and
not community level and for long time periods to build confidence among
disputants that the system managing the conflict will remain in place.
Here I am referring to such things as land records describing agreements.
Types of conflict
I now turn to look at some of the different types
of conflict happening around the world and the role land surveyors either
are playing or could play. Let me start by showing you some overheads
of a historically Black area in South Africa called the Greater Edendale
Area. Trevor Cowie, the Chief Surveyor of the Pietermaritzburg-Msunduzi
Transitional Executive Council, produced these on Integraph using Geomedia
Pro. Aerial photography, ground surveys, South Africa's geodetic all played
a role in building the picture which is updated regularly using such tools
as videography. The first overhead shows you an overview of the area.
The pink is informal and the blue if formal. There are about 25,000 parcels
in the area, and thousands of informal subdivisions, with a population
of about 300,000 people. These slides show you how the informal settlement
does not conform to the state land boundaries, or the cadastrally surveyed
boundaries, or the boundaries of the privately owned land which is developed.
You can see how there are 2 houses on small sites which legally are supposed
to have one and that on many large properties there is a large amount
of what is known as shack farming. Another point of land conflict is that
many of these areas have been owned in freehold by Blacks for the last
100 years. Because of a range of factors, one third of the properties,
have dead titles because no registered transfers have been taken to the
heirs during that time. Also one third of the properties are in an administrative
limbo because owners applied to undertake subdivisions but did not meet
the subdivision land use conditions. Finally, there are 6 General Plans
for this area, and sites have been taken out of each of these, and the
GPs have not yet been coordinated. Here I must refer you to the thesis
of Trevor Cowie and say that a paper describing this will be produced
as soon as the thesis is complete.
The role of the land surveyor, working with other land professionals in
this situation is straight forward in one sense:-
• To deliver tenure security to the thousands
of people without it in this area;
• To supply information about the land so that cloudy titles can
be cleaned up thereby facilitating land and service delivery;
• Manage the land records over time during this process prior to
their entry into the registry;
• Manage the information about the overlapping range of rights
and claims and not just the cadastral information. That is the legal
status of the cadastral information varies as does the individual status
of freehold owners in relation to being able to deal with the land;
However, it is immediately obvious that most of this
work will involve conflict, between the landowners and their legal tenants
and illegal squatters, between the local authority and the landowners
over service provision, between the squatters and the local authority
and so on. That is, it is not possible for the land surveyor to do the
work in isolation from this conflict. Land surveyors facing this type
of situation need new tools to assist them with their work.
Lets examine a national scale land conflict such as Kosovo. There are
obviously short, medium and long term priorities in such a situation in
relation to the land. In the short term it is important to make it possible
for refugees to be able to return to their place of origin. Ideally, they
should be housed as soon as possible, but often insufficient houses exist
because the houses have been destroyed. In this situation, vacant land
needs to be found and people settled immediately. In this situation, precise
boundaries are not the issue but rather, the provision and management
of services such as water and sewerage. If people have land they will
house themselves in temporary shelters fairly quickly.
Once this is completed, the focus should be on longer term security issues.
This will involve:-
• Creating records of the people who are in
temporary occupation of the land and ascertaining their land related
needs;
• Making it possible for people to return to their own houses if
they are still standing. This will in some cases also involve restitution
claims for houses and land already occupied by someone else;
• This will in turn mean that information is needed about which
land/houses are claimed for restitution, and a restitution process put
in place;
•Land delivery, with or without housing delivery, for those living
in temporary occupation, whose houses have been destroyed;
• The development of an understanding of what land administration
system existed prior to the war and what records are available to assist
with the relocation and the supply of secure tenure;
The building of a cadastral and land registration
system in the conventional sense should be developed in the long term,
building on the pre-war situation, the post war reconstruction approaches
and sound land administration principles. Again the role of the land surveyor,
working with other professionals, is both straight forward and made more
complex by conflict. Tasks which would need to be undertaken include:-
• Maps of areas are essential to be able to
identify vacant land for temporary occupation of large numbers of people;
• Large scale maps of villages will probably need to be created
to be able to relocate people, manage the restitution process and begin
land and service delivery;
•The creation of land records, which would underpin tenure security,
would need to be developed with a spatial component;
• And so on.
Again, land surveyors facing this type of situation
need both their conventional tools and new tools.
Land administration infrastructure
One of the new approaches discussed at Bathurst and Melbourne was a move
away from using the cadastral infrastructure as the only tool to using
the land administration infrastructure as a more encompassing tool allowing
more options.
A land administration infrastructure is "the
organisations, standards, processes, information and dissemination systems
and technologies required to support the allocation, transfer, dealing
and use of land. The Bathurst Declaration states that one of the major
challenges will be to build an infrastructure that is sufficiently robust
to, among other things, effectively support the goal of enhancing security..
while at the same time being sufficiently simple and efficient so as to
promote and sustain widespread participation. The process for formalising
property rights will necessarily involve significant community participation
whilst the subsequent registration and transfer process will have to be
capable of an evolving response to changing community requirements."(1999:5)
Although the Declaration did not put details into exactly what form such
a land administration infrastructure would take, one of the major issues
debated was whether property and information had to be parcel based and
how to simplify registration. This was debated because only 14 percent
of the worlds population lives in developed countries and the cadastral
infrastructure designed for these countries is often inappropriate for
the developing world. Many countries in the developing world only have
documentary forms of evidence for only 10 percent of their land parcels
and in sub Saharan Africa that drops to 1 percent. To deal with this issue
a number of statements were made in the declaration and I quote these:-
Page 27 "The extent of the challenge.. varies from country to country.
The land registry component of a land administration system may vary from
the simple recording of tenure towards complex registration of guaranteed
title. The geometric component may vary from a simple list of georeferences
to complex land information systems. As such decision makers need to choose
an appropriate level of sophistication, noting that much of the information
that is required will need to be geo-spatially referenced.. .Land administration
systems need to.. meet the requirements of a greater variety of users."
Pg 23 "Land administration systems need to be re-engineered to accommodate
other forms of information which may not be parceled based. This will
facilitate the collection of information on a range of tenure types such
as informal settlements, occupancy claims, indigenous and customary rights,
water rights and overlapping rights. It will also allow improved management
of rural areas and large scale regularisation of informal settlements."
By allowing non parcel based information and property to form part of
the infrastructure makes it possible for land surveyors to increase their
contribution to land management and conflict management.
Stakeholders Forum
Land management involves conflict management, and
to manage conflict so that they can do their jobs better land surveyors
need allies. They need to build alliances with other people in the land
and information field so that land management can be more effectively
undertaken to address the problems raised at the beginning of this speech.
To build these allies Peter Dale suggested that Stakeholders' Forums should
be created. Such a forum should include all stakeholders to ensure that
information is made available to all parties, thereby facilitating negotiation.
Often when people have information disputes are reduced. So such a forum
should be composed of those with an interest in, or who are dependent
on, land information. The forum, and any LIM system associated with it,
should be inclusive and not exclude certain stakeholders, otherwise it
will not be possible for all the decision makers involved in a conflict
to reach consensus. In some countries this means involving informal settlement
leaders and/ indigenous rights leaders. The forum should:-
• Bring together technical people, such as
surveyors, GIs specialists, computer specialists with other stakeholders.
A major objective should be the transfer of knowledge between measurement
experts and other professions, between all professions and other decision
makers, and between technical experts and decision makers at the center
and those at the provincial and local levels Part of this process should
include building capacity in decision makers to use land information.
This should be done to build up a knowledge base on land management
amongst the stakeholders, so that information acquisition and dissemination
is not solely a technical process but is interactive. This is a critical
component of such a forum, given the relationship between information,
power and conflict management;
• Address the problem of land management conflicts and advise on
solutions. This approach should mean that a range of stakeholders previously
excluded from such forums could now be included and could see the problems
with which land surveyors are confronted;
Overlapping rights
The final new tool which needs to be developed relates
to the management of over lapping rights. Discussion at Melbourne indicated
that the focus on private individualized property rights was undermining
the ability to manage land sustainably and that in future an approach
needed to be developed which facilitated overlapping rights, whereby the
bundle of rights in a parcel would be split up between a number of parties.
That is public property rights would become increasingly important as
would a variety of lease and contract rights. An urban example of this
is occurring in India, where landowners and the squatters on their properties
are reaching agreements through land readjustment exercises whereby both
the landowner and the squatters benefit.
An example of this discussed in the conference came from Australia, in
relation to native land titles. It was stated by Graham Neate who is the
President of the National Native Titles Tribunal. He said that processes
were being set up to manage overlapping and co-existing rights, both between
native rights claimants and between native rights claimants and lease
holders. The process firstly included the encouragement of conflict management
and mediation processes as a way forward rather than court processes as
the first step. It also encouraged native land claimants to bring forward
joint claims to be adjudicated. Prior to negotiations the exact type of
claims with respect to land use had to be ascertained. This made it possible
to decide whether the lease conditions extinguished the native title conditions,
as under law native, title was extinguished by registered rights. Stakeholders
were also encouraged to work out detailed conditions to be registered
in the native land titles registry, as a form of contract, to prevent
later disputes over hunting rights, fires, closure of gates, land use,
access to the land and so on. The legal structure for this is in place
and he hoped that the parties would start to flesh this out, which in
turn would feed back into the legal structure.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I outline the major recommendations
of the Bathurst Declaration. However, given what I have been discussing,
it should be clear that it will be very difficult to achieve these goals
without managing land and conflict. The Bathurst workshop recommends a
global commitment to:-
1. Providing effective legal security of tenure
and access to property to all men and women, including indigenous people's,
those living in poverty and other disadvantaged groups;
2. Promoting the land administration reforms essential for sustainable
development and facilitating full and equal access for men and women
to land-related economic opportunities, such as credits and natural
resources;
3. Investing in the necessary land administration infrastructure and
in the dissemination of land information required to achieve these reforms;
4. Halving the number of people around the world who do not have effective
access to secure property rights in land by the Year 2010.
I conclude on that note.
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