Improving accessibility of land resources

Promoting access to land
Ensuring access to available land

Context

Buying or having access to land is often a first step in enabling people to move towards economic self-sufficiency and an improved standard of living.

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities. Agenda 21 recommends improving access to land resources by: strengthening/developing legal frameworks for land management, access to land resources and land ownership – in particular, for women – and for the protection of tenants; defining specific programme/project objectives in cooperation with local communities; designing local management plans to include progressive measures, thereby providing a means of altering project design or changing management practices, as appropriate.

Claim

Land is often a very sensitive and political issue. This is so particularly in major urban centres and national capitals. The ideal solution to increasing availability of land to to landless would be to ensure adequate public ownership and distribution of land. The problem is unwillingness to make unpopular decision such as confiscating land. In many case, the local government simply does not have the money to purchase land in sufficient quantity. However decentralization of industries and services would release pressure on land in the city area. Cheaper land could be obtained in the new locations.

Ownership of productive resources whether in the form of land or machinery can make a major difference to the poor. Transfer of the ownership of land from the landlord to the tenant usually resulted in fresh investment by the tenant to increase the productivity of their newly acquired and highly valued land.