Innovation in rural land policy and tenure in Southeast Asia

Dalrymple, Kate, Jude Wallace and Ian Williamson

Since the early 1980s land administration system projects have revolved around delivering and formalizing old typee tenures derived from stable legal orders and institutional recognition. Land administration designs and conventional tenure typologies are often engineered to suit assimilation of land arrangements into formal property markets. However, in developing countries in Southeast Asia the majority of the rural poor rely on systems of access to land sourced in social practice not law or government. Formalising these socially derived access modes by using familiar land administration tools of security of tenure, land rights, spatial identification and institutionalisation of credit systems is now seen as problematic, especially in the context of deeply entrenched poverty. Innovations in project designs are slowly responding to research results emerging from sustainable development objectives and changes to land policy.

Event: 3rd FIG Regional Conference for Asia and the Pacific : Surveying the Future - Contributions to Economic, Environmental and Social Development

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Document type:Innovation in rural land policy and tenure in Southeast Asia (109 kB - pdf)