I S S U E # 7 | 2 0 1 3

“If a land policy document is not gender-responsive, then it risks excluding disadvantaged groups and those may be the poor, women or men,“ alerts Cyprian Selebalo of the GLTN Secretariat. Speaking after the just-concluded September workshop in the Caribbean, he is glad that the land officers in attendance are beginning to appreciate the crucial component that is gender for a sustainable land management system. By the second day of the meeting, some of the participants who had initially seen “no gender issues“ in how they do things, had seen the light, thanks to the Gender Evaluation Criteria tool. The tool, developed in consultation with GLTN partners, promotes gender responsiveness in approaches to land. With their eyes now opened, these land practitioners drawn from 12 islands in the area, purpose to hold policy discussions with colleagues with the aim of evaluating existing laws and interrogating how inclusive they are. Miles away, a youth and land sitting in New York tabled concerns over how many region’s land policies and conversations lacked the youth component. This, despite the bulging global youth population that is exceeds1.2 billion today; many of whom continue to pack their bags for the city.

As a response, representatives from Brazil, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Nepal have devised youth and land projects that will promote land tenure awareness among the demographic and, hopefully, heighten their participation in land governance, reports Kate Fairlie of the FIG’s Young Surveyors Network.The action research projects presented at a workshop held between 12 - 16 September “have a major challenge of addressing perceptions about young people. As a generational category, young people are treated with suspicion and marginalized from decision making, “ said Tayiona Sanangurai, a representative of the Young Voices Network, Zimbabwe.According to GLTN’s new release, What Land Means to Youth, there is need, among the youth, for land for public spaces, tenure security and economic activities, from employment, migration to entrepreneurship – and need to understand their rights, and opportunities for their voices to be heard.A key outcome of these projects will be the development and refinement of youth responsive land tools that can be replicated to promote youth engagement in land governance.

Youth, gender take center stage in land conversations

newsletter

TOOL TALK

Land Monitoring initiative gets the

world ‘clued’ in

UN-Habitat shares solutions for slum

upgrading

Facilitated by

STDM can help us plan together: How the tool is

catching on, fast

page 2

page 3

back page

INSIDE

Some of the participants at the Land Challenge Dialogue in New York in September 2013. Photo: Kate Fairlie

Sustainable land management must be inclusive, leaving no disadvantaged groups sidelined

October 21, 2013 Assemblée Générale de la Fédération des Géomètres Francophones et 2e Université de Perfectionnement

November 4-8, 2013AfricaGIS 2013 Conference and the GSDI 14 World ConferenceAddis Ababa, Ethiopia

October 1-4, 2013World Summit of Local and Regional Leaders 4th UCLG Congress Rabat, Morocco

November 11-15, 2013Global Land Tool Network Partners’ MeetingHague, The Netherlands

EVENTS

ENGAGE

UN-Habitat has held the first consultative workshop on new opportunities for slum upgrading with better governance through a Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment (PILaR) tool.PILaR, one of UN-Habitat’s new initiatives, aims to promote the supply of serviced urban land through a negotiated process. It is also a tool that can help bring about sustainable densities through planned densification and the redevelopment of dilapidated neighborhoods in addition to the upgrading of slums. “We need to find new solutions to our urban problems. Urban land is too precious a component for policy makers and for communities because its value changes. Public sector working with the communities located on, and linked to, the land must be able to predictably influence the increase in the value of the land and benefit from it. They must be in the driving seat in regards to negotiations between the public and the private sector around the burdens and

Call for 2014 WorldBank papers

Registered for WUF7 yet?

Good practice, anyone?

UN-Habitat workshop shares solutions for slum upgrading

benefits of urban development, “ said Clarissa Augustinus, Head of Land and the Global Land Tool Network at UN-Habitat.Today, close to one billion people live in slums where they continue to face deprivations such as lack of drinking water at an affordable price, proper sanitation, overcrowding, inadequate structures and settlements located in hazardous areas as well as insecurity of tenure.Together, participants drawn from Kenya, Ghana, Antigua, Fiji, Trinidad, Uganda, Namibia, Rwanda, Philippines and Egypt will discuss and design national slum upgrading work programs using land readjustment.The three-day workshop held at the UN-Habitat Headquarters in Nairobi, elaborated further on UN-Habitat’s vision for the improved use of urban land and the creation of sustainable cities.

Nairobi, Kenya

A participant during the workshop held in Nairobi in September, 2013. Photo: Ivy Mutisya/UN-Habitat

The 15th Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty will be held at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, D.C., on March 31 – April 3, 2014. The conference theme will be “Integrating Land Governance into the Post-2015 Agenda: Harnessing Synergies for Implementation and Monitoring Impact.” Important Dates: ·Online submission of Group Proposals: November 10, 2013Online submission of individual abstracts: November 17, 2013Notification of acceptance: December 15, 2013Submission of full paper with a 200 word summary: February 28, 2014More info available on www.gltn.net. Send enquiries to: landconference@worldbank.org

The Competition on Good Practices to Improve Security of Tenure in the Muslim World aims at documenting and deepening the global knowledge on approaches, initiatives and projects that increased security of tenure in Muslim contexts, with special consideration to the poor, the women, and the youth.First Prize: US$ 4,000Second Prize: US$ 2,500Third Prize: US$ 1,500Deadline for Submissions: 28 February 2014More info available on www.gltn.netSearch word: Competition

Register yourinterest and participation in the upcoming Seventh session of the World Urban Forum will be held in Medellin, Colombia from 5 to 11 April 2014 and will focus on the overall theme “Urban Equity in Development - Cities for Life”.Partners are encouraged to register their proposals for:• Exhibitions• Side events• Networking eventsTraining proposals may also be submitted .Deadline:30 September, 2013.More info available www.gltn.net and www.unhabitat.org

events!Let us post your

vera.marosi@unhabitat.org

send to

Contestsconferenceevents

Land Matrix, largely described as a global and independent land monitoring initiative, will facilitate an open development community of citizens, researchers, policy-makers and technology specialists to promote transparency and accountability in decisions over land and investment. The tool, put together by one of the GLTN partners, International Land Coalition (ILC), uses open data to visualise, among land deals throughout the world. As an open tool, the observatory is fed primarily by members of the public in the hope of making them active contributors to critical decisions that touch on land users globally.As an open tool, the Observatory allows wide participation in constantly upgrading, correcting and improving the information it contains. Records available on the landmatrix.org are derived from a variety of sources. Research papers and policy reports by international and local organisations and NGOs, official government records, media reports, field-based research projects as well as personal information offered via the website are some of the outlines sources.

In addition to the Global Observatory, the Land Matrix Initiative supports, and is linked to, other more specific Observatories on land deals that are country, regional and thematic-based. The Land Matrix aims to contribute in an innovative and relevant way to the growing movement towards open development - allowing for greater public involvement in critical decisions that affect the lives of land-users around the world.The Global Observatory tries to foster links with public, private and civil society stakeholders in order to increase the quality of the information. By using the crowdsourcing function of this website, any user is able to submit details on a deal. As this information is verified to the extent possible by the partnership before it is included in the database, changes may not be reflected immediately. Comments made on existing deals remain on the website, unless the deal is removed from the database.

Source: Exerpts from landmatrix.org

A printscreen image derived from www.landmatrix.org

To learn more about LAND MATRIX, go to www.landmatrix.org

With Land Matrix, the world is watching

The Global Land Tool Network is pleased to add three new partners to its growing fold of partners.The latest additions, Arab Union of Surveyors (AUS), Centre for Land Tenure Studies (CLTS) and Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) now make part of a robust 60-partner network that works towards securing land and property rights for all. RCMRD, based in Nairobi, Kenya is an inter-governmental organization and currently has 19 Contracting Member States in the Eastern and Southern Africa Regions. The centre works to promote

sustainable development through generation, application and dissemination of Geo-Information and allied ICT services and products in the Member States and beyond. The Centre for Land Tenure Studies (CLTS) was established by UMB’s departments UMB School of Economics and Business, International Environment and Development, Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning, and Ecology and Natural Resource Management. It serves to further joint research, teaching and dissemination on land tenure and related issues.The Arab Union of Surveyors, just like

Growing GLTN welcomes three more partners

560

DAYS

PARTNERS

PARTNERSMEETING

Working at country levelImplementing land

tools through partnership

11-15 NovemberHague, Netherlands

www.gltn.net

TOOL TALK

existing partners will, through their networks, continue to advocate for secure land and property rights for all.Partners within the network adhere to the core values of GLTN which include pro poor, good governance, equity, subsidiarity, sustainability, affordability, systematic large scale and gender sensitiveness. Additionally, they engage in scaleable land tool development, provide financial and / or knowledge input, represent global and regional institutions, organizations or networks and join the network for non-commercial purposes.

See full list of GLTN partners on www.gltn.net

+

This newsletter is published by the Global Land Tool Network for its Partners. For more information, please contact: GLTN Secretariat, Facilitated by UN-Habitat P.O. Box 30030 Nairobi Kenya. Tel: +254 20 762 5199 Web: www.gltn.net. Email: gltn@unhabitat.org

Tools, Guidelines and Approaches for Strengthening

Women’s Access to Land

What land means to Youth (Eng - 2013)

Guide to Land Mediation (Eng - 2013)

Securing Africa’s Land for Shared Prosperity (Eng - 2013) by World Bank

OFF THE PRESS

Partner publication

Musa Semanda, leader of the National Slum Dwellers of Uganda, is eager to share with his municipality authorities on the application of the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM). His Mbale community was the first to experience the efficiency of the pro-poor land administration tool in 2012.Along with a group of 30 community members from nine municipalities dotted across Uganda, he participated in an STDM training held in Kampala on the use and application of STDM in which concepts, practical aspects of the tool as well as basic mapping concepts using GPS and Google Maps were shared.“If we go by STDM, we shall improve our information gathering and this can help us (municipality and community) plan together,” he says.The STDM data on informal settlements is needed for a range of purposes: to enable residents to demand their rights as citizens, to improve land tenure, to plan for the provision of infrastructure and services, to redevelop/upgrade the slums, to guide housing improvement, land allocation and adjudication, and to use in land administration and information systems.Another participant, Mtege Nicholas of the Makerere University’s School of Built Environment believes that STDM “is the most important tool for urban planners during field surveys and enumeration”.In recognising that most of the land in developing countries is unrecorded, STDM promotes pro poor land administration solution whereby the public are encouraged to fully participate in the process.“The questionnaire covers all aspects of planning and identifies what a planner should consider such as the area of study, environment, land tenure system-types, onwnership and even security of tenure. Thereafter, using the GPS ‘machine’, we are able to collect crucial

STDM can help us plan together with municipality

information for mapping. With such information, it becomes easy for the community already involved in the process to share what they deem as priorities. The information is thereafter mapped on GIS that would be used by professionals and non-professionals alike,” Nicholas reports.Both Nicholas and Semanda- just like many of the participants- find STDM to be “friendly, efficient and participatory”. They appreciate that it modifies their enumeration practices by capturing detailed information that was previously missing.In Uganda, where they hail from, the slum dwellers are very active in the enumeration exercise as part of community mobilization strategy for participation in various spheres of inclusiveness and development.It is such enumeration data that STDM uses to allow slum dwellers produce reports and other statistics based on their needs as they interact with authorities and development partners.The just-concluded Kampala training kick started Phase 2 of STDM implementation which is part of the TSUPU program - an initiative by the Government of Uganda supported by Cities Alliance and World Bank in slum upgrading, and which is being piloted in 15 municipalities.This Phase will focus on the broader application of the tool covering the TSUPU implementation municipalities in settlement profiling exercises.The three-day learning event co-hosted by UN Habitat/GLTN and ACTogether, a local urban NGO based in Uganda brought together representatives from The Ministry of Land, Housing and Urban Development, Makerere University, City engineers as well as Uganda Support to Municipal Infrastructure development (USMID).

Kampala, Uganda

Participants during the STDM training in Kampala, Uganda in August, 2013. Photo: Danilo Antonio/ UN-Habitat

Land information and recordation tool allows communities and public domain to participate fully in the land administration process on the ground