Land management for erosion prevention: A case study for a Turkish nature reserve

As a result of landslides and soil erosion, a substantial amount of soil has been lost in Turkey. Particularly, fertile lands have long been faced with the threat of erosion, largely as a result of traditional (unplanned) land use practices. This threat is more evident in the Black Sea Region with its rough topography and rainy climate. The basic reason for this threat is the lack of organization in land use planning and control. Although proposals, in the context of this requirement, are included in national development plans, they have not been implemented. Accordingly, in this study research based on spatial data evaluation was carried out for Sera Lake located in Akcaabat, Trabzon, Turkey. For this purpose, temporal area, depth and volume changes of the lake were determined by utilizing topographic maps, aerial photographs and hydrographical measurements. To evaluate determined changes in the size of the lake and to produce suggestions to legislators for required sustainable land management activities, information on land use/cover types, land ownership and climate in the vicinity of the lake was utilized. As a result, it was determined that the area, depth and volume of the lake were significantly decreased during the last decades, as a consequence of erosion mainly caused by traditional land use practices; thus, the lake is threatened with the danger of extinction due to erosion. Precautions required for the alleviation of erosion and other adverse environmental effects which largely seem to be caused by harsh physical properties (caused basically by topography) of the region were discussed. In support of the information inherent to the region, traditional arable land use was logically determined as the basic non-natural factor (which is directly prone to erosion) to be rearranged in the context of sustainable land management. In this context, beyond nationwide actions (national agricultural policy and Soil Protection and Land Use Law), which may provide the required land management tools in the long term, it is proposed that planning and accordingly land management activities specific to the study area (Sera Valley) should immediately be commenced in close collaboration with the related public (owners or farmers). However, behaviours of different types of land users (engaged in commercial, subsistence and semi-subsistence farming) and also high number of owners and/or farmers (caused by small pieces of land parcels owned/used in shares) make the desired collaboration almost impossible. This socio-economical problem may be solved by further developing the current land registry and cadastre system in terms of customary land use rights, land use/cover changes and updating procedures.     

林业利用国际金融组织贷款项目特点分析

在分析世界银行林业贷款项目特点的同时,简要总结了世界银行1985年以来实施林业贷款项目的总体规模、取得的成效。认为世行林业项目服务大局与先导发展相结合体现了示范性;国外贷款与国内资金相结合具有集成性;生态建设与产业发展相结合突显了协调性;引进与吸收结合具有创新性;项目建设与人才培养相结合展示了持续性。     

世界银行贷款政策变化与中国林业的对策

分析了世界银行贷款政策的变化及其对中国林业发展的影响,提出了充分利用世界银行贷款,进一步发展林业与世界银行合作关系的对策构想。     

水利利用世界银行贷款项目还贷机制的研究

分析水利世行贷款项目还贷中存在的问题及其成因,提出从宏观和微观方面建立起良性的项目还贷保障机制。水利利用世行贷款还贷保障的宏观机制包括水利项目的汇率风险承担;水利项目的利率风险承担;对项目进行分类管理。水利利用世行贷款还贷保障的微观机制包括:做好贷款项目设计阶段的融资工作和项目的物资采购工作;建立还贷组织机构;建立准备金制度;建立还贷风险预警机制。     

Violent visions of an ownership society: The land administration project in Petén, Guatemala

This article is a case study of phase one of the World Bank's land administration project in Petén, Guatemala. Although the project's stated aims are merely to formalize an existing set of individual landed property rights, this development intervention necessarily changes the property regime, thereby changing underlying relationships that land as property embodies. Impact evaluations conducted by development economists may fail to substantively address displacement and violence that occur as a short-term effect of the project and long-term disparate impacts of the project that may exacerbate existing inequalities. The case of Petén also highlights the possibility for violent enforcement of property boundaries, where conflict surges between the disenfranchised and those who gain power under the new property regime.     

Evaluating land administration projects in developing countries

There have been various approaches to evaluating and comparing the performance of land administration and land titling projects in developing countries. Many of these consider the efficiency of land administration processes and the capacity of institutions. This paper presents the results of research undertaken by the authors and considers the most common approaches taken to date, and the strengths and limitations of these approaches. The authors argue that improvements are needed to project design and make recommendations for more effective use of socio-economic analyses.     

Establishing a modern cadastral system within a transition country: Consequences for the Republic of Moldova

This paper examines the current situation following from the implementation of a land cadastre in the Republic of Moldova, a transition country that is seeking to establish a market economy as a means of facilitating greater prosperity. After consolidating the concepts of the functions land property serve within a capitalist-based economy, we examine the current state of affairs as it exists on the ground within this former socialist state and examine the consequences of imposing western-derived views on land reform in terms of tenure security and credibility. This reveals an extensive problem of land fragmentation in the rural sector, which is in part being countered by the emergence of a land lease market that sees new individual landowners providing land for the use of commercial enterprises. However, given the unique political economy present within Moldova, this situation in many ways contradicts, if not constrains, many of the potential benefits that a formal property system is thought to allow for, and therefore the objectives behind the transition phase have yet to be fully achieved. This has forced a re-examination of theory versus the practice of land property privatisation and land market interactions.     

An evaluation framework for earthquake-responsive land administration

In recent years earthquakes and their secondary hazards have claimed the largest number of lives of all large natural disasters. Some of the world’s most earthquake-prone zones are also areas of high population density. The impact is magnified by vulnerability factors including non-enforcement of building codes, knowledge gaps, urban poverty and poor governance capacity to manage and reduce earthquake risks. Poor security of land tenure and property rights increases the vulnerability of people and affects their ability to respond to natural disasters.Earthquake recovery and reconstruction provides very significant challenges for land agencies, with these challenges differing from one country to the next due to differences in the local context. Drawing on contrasting case studies in Haiti, Nepal and New Zealand this paper identifies the common post-earthquake land administration functions and challenges that may apply to many contexts. These lessons provide land agencies and other key stakeholders with a summary of the challenges an earthquake poses for land administration at different post-disaster stages. We also discuss the policy and regulatory, institutional, operational and preparedness lessons for land administration. From these lessons we propose a framework for evaluating the earthquake-responsiveness of a land administration system. This framework can be used by a land agency in an earthquake prone region, or where an earthquake has recently occurred, to assess what challenges to land administration might occur in the event of an earthquake, and the preparedness of their land administration system.     

Large-scale agricultural investments under poor land governance in Zambia

This paper looks at how large-scale land acquisitions made by foreign investors in Zambia are implemented. It scrutinizes both the steps that an investor has to go through in order to attain land within the Zambian land governance system as well as the actors shaping the acquisition process.As the most important formal change introduced to the Zambian land governance system, the Lands Act 1995 paved the way for foreign investments in land. The new actor “investor” on the other hand has emerged as a result of rising prices for food and non-food commodities. The study finds that the enforcement of formal rules in the process of acquiring land is currently weak and largely determined by a number of actors: while investors, local authorities and government officials have strong leverage, local land users are excluded from the process. If the process of transformations of customary land into state land continues, land administration will be inevitably shifted toward statutory jurisdiction. As a result, local chiefs will lose their discretionary power thereby further marginalizing local land users. As it stands, welfare implications are chiefly down to the individual actors. However, it is only the government that can issue a guarantee that local land users will also benefit from land acquisition.