News in 2020
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Land Consolidation Legislation - FAO Legal Guide and Its Appliation at
Country Level
18 June 2020, webinar
More than 550 people from across the world took the opportunity to
learn about land consolidation, the legal framework, and its
implementation at the country level. The successful webinar was jointly
organised by FIG and FAO on 18 June. Originally, two sessions about land
consolidation and the implementation at country level were planned for
the FIG Working Week 2020 in Amsterdam (May 2020). Since the FIG Working
Week had to be cancelled, FAO and FIG jointly agreed to organise a
webinar to replace the two sessions initially planned.
FIG was represented by chair of FIG Commission 8 Marije Leuwsma. The
webinar was competently moderated by Morten Hartvigsen, FAO.
The presenters and panellists at the webinar
Land consolidation is a well-proven land management instrument, which
has traditionally been used for agricultural development with a main
objective of reducing land fragmentation and increasing holding and farm
sizes. In the last decades, countries in Western Europe have developed
land consolidation into a multi-purpose instrument with a broader
objective. Multi-purpose land consolidation can facilitate the
implementation of projects related to nature restoration, climate change
adaptation and mitigation and large-scale infrastructure projects where
land consolidation provides an opportunity to compensate landowners and
farmers in land instead of monetary compensation.
After the introduction of the
Legal Guide on Land Consolidation by Margret Vidar (FAO), panellist
discussed the implementation of land consolidation at the country level
(e.g. North Macedonia, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Armenia). Based on the
experiences of the panellists, various recommendations and
considerations were shared about the scope of land consolidation,
safeguarding the rights of land owners and users, the ‘at least as well
of principle’ and how to secure these in law.
From the audience many interesting questions to the panel were
raised. Addressed questions related to the application of land
consolidation for urban or peri-urban areas, how inheritance influenced
land fragmentation, how to include women’s rights, how to deal with
leased land, diverse farmers’ strategies regarding land fragmentation,
how to apply land consolidation in customary tenure systems etc.
Questions that could not be discussed in the webinar will be answered
and become available later. Based on the raised questions, we can
conclude that there is much interest for land consolidation in various
countries across the world, and with paying respect to general
principles of good governance.
Were you not able to join live? You can watch the webinar now on
YouTube.
More information, including background literature, can be found on
the
Land Portal website. Here, you can also share your view on and
experiences with land consolidation on three different topics:
- Multi-purpose land consolidation in support of sustainable development,
- Safeguarding tenure rights in land consolidation,
- Land consolidation or…. can land markets solve land
fragmentation?
Figure 1 Region from where participants joined:
Figure 2 Type of organisation - of
participants:
Marije Leuwsma
22 June 2020
