World Bank Poverty Conference

Representatives from International Land Systems (ILS), Inc. presented at the Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, held in Washington, DC, USA, from 18th to 21st March. ILS delegates presented on the company’s solutions designed to help governments address the challenges of land administration including land registry and recording, cadastre mapping, government revenue management, property appraisal, and economic development.

The purposeof the World Bank conference was to increase awareness of the successfulimplementation of innovative approaches that are helping improve landgovernance and contribute to the well-being of the world’s poorest populations.

Director ofTraining Services, Nigel Edmead also presented on ILS’ work in Ghana usingOpenTitle as a means to cost-effectively and efficiently collect and digitisedocuments related to properties and associated individuals. In the session“Making land administration accessible”, Edmead explained that in much of thedeveloping world, there exists a vital need to formalise land registrationprocesses yet such systems are often inaccessible for a variety of reasons.Using OpenTitle, which is based on the pro-poor land rights recording system,the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) ILS and its local partners in Ghana aredeveloping property folios, a collection of property information that caneventually be used as a land title in order to address such constraints in theregion. Said Edmead, “It is often assumed that technology is the major cost ofa registration of cadastre system. Yet our results around the world demonstratethat the total cost of land information systems represents only 12% of thetotal cost of the system.

Director ofSales & Marketing, Christopher H. Barlow spoke about ILS’ work in ruralChina through the Chinese Rural Land Registration and Certification Programme.The session, entitled “Improving Governance of Rural and Natural Resources inChina” addressed ILS’ introduction of a model to derive costs and benefits fora systematic land registration and mapping campaign in Anhui Province. TheChinese government is currently experimenting with methods to quickly andaccurately register rural households’ lands. This is, in part, to encouragemore equitable wealth distribution throughout the country, and also, at amicroeconomic level, to protect agricultural lands from rapid industrial,retail, and residential land development. Said Barlow, “With increased urbanisation,there’s increasing pressure on agricultural lands. The heart of our project wasto help the government, at a micro-level, to develop land registration systemsso that village farmers were able to effectively protect their land.”

ILS delegatesalso sponsored the Land Administration Solutions Workshop to discuss thecompany’s vision for how land administration solutions are relevant forgovernments at different stages of economic development. ILS projects in Ghana,Ukraine and South Africa were emphasised.