Improving accessibility of land resources

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.

1. 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.

2. 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.

1. Strengthening
2. Refining mode of access to natural resources
3. Improving access

1. Providing prime land
2. Protecting right of unrestricted access to land
3. Promoting women's access to land and property
4. Limiting monopolized land ownership
5. Increasing security of land tenure
6. Improving land markets
7. Ensuring availability of land for low-income groups
8. De-commodifying land

1. Reducing poverty
2. Reducing loss of common open spaces
3. Providing sufficient land space
4. Providing basic needs
5. Promoting community self-determination
6. Increasing public participation in desertification control
7. Enabling poor to achieve sustainable livelihood

1. Uncovering purchasable land
2. Structuring land resources guardianship
3. Strengthening local organizations responsible for land management
4. Strengthening land management research
5. Strengthening international coordination of land resource management activities
6. Strengthening community-based land resource protection
7. Selling and buying property
8. Providing institutional and legal support on land tenure for farmers
9. Integrating use of land resources
10. Improving education on land management
11. Diversifying economies in developing countries
12. Decentralizing industry
13. Decentralizing government activities
14. Creating community land trust
15. Confiscating property
16. Assessing consequences of different land tenure systems
17. Adopting legislation to guide sustainable land development

1. Limiting rights to land
2. Limiting availability of land

1. Improving land
2. Alleviating rural poverty

1. Limited available land
2. Limited availability of land for low-income and disadvantaged groups

1. Land
2. Accessibility