A flexible land administration system focusing the citizens

Abstract

There are global trends to access, to use and to secure land ownership, defined by pressures on natural resources, such as mining and oil exploitation; on land for rapid urban urbanization; on re-settlement and reallocation as a result of natural disasters; and on land for food and biofuel productions.  In addition to it, lands markets are globalized and there is a tendency to acquire lands at large scale, and to have large private investments, creating impact on rural and local communities. In the Colombian case, the historical conflicts related to land ownership, to land access, to land use and to subsoil resources exploitation, affected institutions and communities particularly at local level, generating land seizing and forced abandonment of land. Within such context, what is the role of government? How to act timely and efficiently to respond to the described forces and trends, while achieving an efficient land management for both, private and public lands?

To face such global pressures, updated and relevant parcel based information is compulsory to get to know beyond the legal status, the ground situation and context on land tenure. Information is essential for both citizens and governments to make assertive decisions, in this sense, efforts should concentrate towards the building, upgrading and maintenance of official and interoperable land records and platforms, overcoming isolated information systems and allowing information exchange, analysis and retrieving, regardless the data sources, the formats and the producer organization.