How Big is Global Insecurity of Tenure?
Robin McLaren
Traditional sources of security of tenure data, e.g. administrative data, national census and household surveys and global polls, to support land indicators for national statistical systems are currently limited, expensive and do not normally have the outreach to the most vulnerable. New, innovative sources of data need to be explored to create a much more comprehensive and meaningful set of statistics that are technically feasible, politically acceptable and obtain stakeholder ownership. Smart phones, satellite imagery, social media, and the ?Internet of Things? continuously generate data everywhere faster and more detailed than ever before all the time. These technologies offer new measurement opportunities and challenges for the land sector. A number of innovative land tenure initiatives are using this new technology and encouraging citizens and communities to directly record their evidence of land rights on global platforms, outside of the formal land administration systems. For example, Cadasta Foundation is developing a global platform to record and manage crowdsourced land rights and Rights Resource Initiative is creating a global baseline of indigenous and community land rights. Pervasive mobile phones could be used to capture perceptions on insecurity of tenure across populations not included in official statistics. However, their success in closing the land information gap is dependent upon convincing citizens to trust these solutions and understand the benefits of participation. Privacy and security of information is paramount and if not managed effectively then these sources of information will be switched off. The paper reviews the current sources of Global Land Indicators and highlights new, innovative sources of land information to strengthen our understanding of the size of the insecurity of tenure gap.
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