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State of national land survey and large-scale mapping
Land Use
Poficy,Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 317-323, 1996
Copyright(~ 1996 ElsevierScienceLtd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0264-8377/96 $15.00 + 0.00
Pergamon
Report State of national land survey and large-scale mapping There is still a dearth of appropriate and adequate land survey and large-scale mapping coverage in many countries to facilitate more effective land-related planning, development and management. This situation, in relative terms, applies to both developed and developing countries. Fortuitously, technology is now available and accessible to expand land surveys and the production of large-scale maps at the scales required to support planning and sustainable land development and management. What is now required is official pubfic policy recognition, the attribution of a higher level of priority to this issue, and the allocation of adequate resources to implement an expanded production programme of large-scale maps of cities, towns and villages to facifitate more appropriate settlements and other related land development planning. Copyright 0 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd
The importance (some would say indispensability) of appropriate land survey and mapping to effective land resources planning, development and management cannot be overstressed. The status of land survey and mapping of countries has considerable impact on the exploration and exploitation of the available natural resources of such countries. Effective land policy and m a n a g e m e n t strategies cannot be f o r m u l a t e d a n d s u s t a i n a b l y implemented in the absence of reasonably adequate land survey data and information regarding available land, its location, quality, disposition, natural resources and use. Land survey d a t a facilitate several land mana g e m e n t - r e l a t e d processes such as land reform, settlement development activities or projects, agricultural projects, and environmental protection measures. When, for example, it is said that land transactions in developing countries take so much time, it is not easily imagined how much the absence of appropriate survey/map information contributes to this. Without an appropriate survey of land, it is difficult to plan, subdivide and develop the land for shelter, infrastructure and associated utilities and ser-
vices, to assign appropriate title and tenure to land parcels, or to protect the environment effectively. With survey and mapping at an appropriate scale, the land parcel is identified, dealings in land become easier, cheaper, faster and safer, and property rights are identifiable and better protected. Access to land is consequently improved.~ With the limited adequacy of appropriately surveyed and mapped land parcels in developing countries today, the purchaser in a land transaction often does not know if he has bought a piece of land or a law suit. 2 Land survey and mapping at appropriate scales are therefore the basic starting point for land identification and land data generation, and form the base upon which sound land management must be founded. This information can act as bases for problem identification, both for technical and policy decision making and for implementation. Effective land management requires therefore the existence of adequate land survey information. Great efforts have gone into various aspects of land management and policy in the recent past, and have indeed continued to increase. Less emphasis, however, has been given to survey and
mapping at appropriate scales as the practical and sustainable building block for these activities, probably because many of these activities have been largely project based. Survey and large-scale mapping are required for planning and improving the conditions in human settlements in this environment of accelerating urbanization and increasing numbers of urban development projects. Urban and rural areas need to be appropriately surveyed to produce large-scale up-todate land information for appropriate planning and management of settlements. 3 Indeed, to advance productive dialogue on sustainable improvement of land policy, land management, land tenure improvement or reform and settlements planning, a land survey and mapping information/data inventory is prerequisite. The need for large-scale maps in the effective planning of settlements and the land management thereof cannot be overstressed. Surveying and mapping are critical tools for decision makers in this aspect of sustainable development. Technology for this is now commonly available. The allocation of appropriate resources and the assignment of a higher priority in the scheme of national development are now required.
A human settlements perspective This note takes the human settlements perspective - - focusing on settlements planning, land m a n a g e m e n t , land administration, and cadastre. It takes the view that environmentally sustainable human settlements cannot be attained without adequate physical planning. Special a t t e n t i o n must
317
Report therefore be given to the planning of settlements to accommodate the increasing population. Land use development should be properly managed through appropriate and environmentally compatible land usage planning to ensure that the environment is not irretrievably damaged and that suitable conditions for its sustainable development are established. Such planning requires large-scale (1:10 000, 1:5 000 or larger) 4 maps, especially in urban and peri-urban areas. With a view to identifying critical areas where the levels and scale of surveys and mapping are below those considered necessary to implement effective planning and land management strategies, and drawing and focusing the attention of national government and international development institutions/organizations to this potent tool of land management, UNCHS (Habitat) in collaboration with the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) decided to undertake a preliminary review of the state, level and scale of national land survey and mapping information available, identifying any critical gaps. It was envisaged that the possible outcome of such a review could provide information necessary for formulating and designing or re-designing programmes that could improve the situation. The objective is to draw and focus attention on the state of national and city land survey and mapping information available, at the relevant planning scales, with a view to identifying and highlighting gaps and associated needs in land information which could possibly assist in formulating and developing more appropriate programmes to improve the situation. It also seeks to draw attention to this area as a possible new priority for technical cooperation and assistance. This Report is a preliminary analysis of that review.
The questionnaire survey For this exercise, a mail questionnaire survey was conducted. The survey frame consisted of a database of 70 FIG Member Countries (supplied by the F I G Secretariat), supplemented
318
by 45 other selected countries. Questionnaires were ultimately sent to 115 c o u n t r i e s ' s u r v e y and m a p p i n g authorities/organizations requesting data/information on survey and mapping coverage at various scales, mapping characteristics, cadastral survey coverage, number of land parcels in the land register, etc. Responses were received from 24 countries (14 developed countries and 10 developing countries). Table 1 is a summary of the responses reflecting the survey and mapping status of the respondent countries. Analysis o f data responses The returns received indicate that, except for Ethiopia, Mongolia, Nepal and Sweden, practically all countries are by now covered 100% by topographic survey and mapping at a scale of 1:100 000 or smaller; some in large part at the small to medium scales of between 1:50 000 and 1:25 000. At scales of 1:25 000 or larger, a fair amount of detail can be picked up or built in. At the more functional scale of 1:10 000 or larger, some countries, such as Bahrain, Brunei, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Switzerland, have a 95100% coverage by survey and mapping. At this scale, Australia is only covered 2.5%, Japan 26%, Mongolia 0.1%, Nepal 5% and USA 25%, The discernible pattern is that (with the possible exception of Bahrain), the few developing countries repres e n t e d in the survey (Botswana, Kenya, Mongolia, Nepal and Zimbabwe) showed low percentage survey and mapping coverage at scales of 1:10 000 or larger. Australia's 2.5% coverage at this scale may be partly explained by the enormous expanse of the country that is still uninhabited. The 25% and 26% coverage at this scale by the United States and Japan, respectively, is somewhat surprising, although in the case of the United States, the lack of national data standards at the various levels (state and local governments) as well as the separate governmental organizations involved may partially explain the apparent relatively low coverage. This may
also possibly be due to inadequate access to the information rather than lack of survey and mapping at this scale. At the national level, cadastral survey/map coverage varies among respondent countries, ranging from 80100% in some European countries to less than 10% in some developing countries. Most of the countries are covered by land use and natural resources surveys and mapping, largely at small to medium scale levels. It is pertinent to note that Brandenburger et al. 5 had, over the past four d e c a d e s (1968-990), p e r i o d i c a l l y undertaken surveys and studies (on a much larger scale than the present one) on the subject of 'Status of World Topographic and Cadastral Mapping' and related issues, under the auspices of the United Nations. These surveys have generally reviewed four scale ranges of map coverage: Range I, 1:25 000 or larger; Range II, 1:50 000; Range III, 1:100000; Range IV, 1:250 000. These surveys showed (as the current survey shows) varying low percentage coverage in the 1:25 000 or larger scale range in the developing countries of Africa and South America, but higher coverage in this scale range in the developed countries of Europe and North America. As in the current survey, the Brandenburger studies noted higher survey and map coverage at the medium scale ranges of 1:100 000/1:50 000, although it was observed that given the annual progress rate of coverage in this scale range (1:3% or less), 6 the recommendation that there should be full topographic map coverage of the land area of the world at the important ranges 1:50 000/1:100 000 by the year 2000 has not been m e t ] It is reasonable to assume that map production should progress at least as rapidly as the population growth rate. s This condition is said to have been met only in four regions: North America, Europe, the former USSR and Oceania. A t the city level At the city level there is uniformly complete survey and mapping coverage at the scale of 1:10 000 or smaller, but at the scale of 1:5 000 or larger,
4 270
Norway
254 521 10 000
9.372m 320 245
41 000 441 41 285 780 000
324 000
147 362
1 566 500
64 588 2 586
587 900
377 000
338 000 356 854 130 000
Area (kin =) 7 692 695.3 582 000 5 847 78 863.6 41 100 43.3 1.2m
100 100
100 100 100 86.75
100 (1:100 000) 100 (1:50 000) 100
100 100
100
100
n/a: not applicable.
100 40.29
100 (1:50 000) 100 0 100 100
15
28
61% at 1:50 000 100 100
t00
% with Coverage at topo area 1:25 000 or coverage smaller 100 99.7 100 100 40 . . 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 30 (1:250 000) (1:50 000) 100 100 100 100 100 100
Source: Tabulated from Questionnaire Survey responses.
USA Zimbabwe
500 500 723 000
18 400
Nepal
14 8 6 50
2 156
Mongolia
Netherlands Sweden Switzerland Turkey
2 600 389.8
123 587 (1992) 24 000
5 000 77 572 10 050
Latvia Luxembou rg
Kenya
Japan
Finland Germany Greece
Survey and mapping coverage Population Country (thousands) Australia 17 581 Bahrain 508 Botswana 1 350 Brunei 260 Czech Republic 10 350 Denmark 5 146 Estonia 600 Ethiopia 50 000
Table 1. National survey/mapping (including cadastral) status.
100 63 95 86.75 (1:50 000) 25 -
60
5
0.1
100 100
na
26
80 100 95
% 1:10 0O0 or larger survey map coverage 2.5 100 . 100 100 100 100 na
60 100 90 70 93.21 urban 61.55 rural 100 46
-
25 100 (1:25 000) 0
na
36
100 100 n/a
% cedastral survey map coverage 99 46 . 37 100 100 6
500 000 750 000
300m .
.
3 000 325 000 40m
7.3m
2.3m
-
-
na
230 000
1.9 m 61.5 x 10 n/a
No. of parcels in land register 9.5m 150 000 . . 36 300 11 988 360 2 500 000 150
60
96
100 100 80
-
-
3 100
na
18
100 100 n/a
.
% of land parcels In cadaatral system 92 73 . 37 100 100 0.1
100 .
100 90 50 -
100
100 (1:100 000) 100
100 100
100 (1:200 000) na
100 100 50
% total areas with land use plan/mop 79 60 . 0 ? 100 0.1
.
100 50 30 100 (1:25 000) 100
80
100 (1:100 000) -
100 50
100 100 100 (1:50 000) 100 (1:200 000) na
% area with natural resources survey/ mappingcovernge 95 . . 0 ? 100 25
100
100 20 100 -
70
100 (1:100 000)
100 50
100 (1:200 000) na
5 689 ?
4 0(30 ? 832 4 500
2 290
-
-
117 50
9 680 (1993) na
1 200 6 200 470
0 1 350 940 153
0 100 soil (100%)
100 100 -
No. of land surveyors 3 340 na
% of area with thematic mapping coverage 95 -
500
3 800 ?
? 2 664 -
na
-
-
-
na
1 787
200 6 200 n/a
0 na 540 -
No. of town/urban plannera 2 600 -
Report developing countries cities are much less covered. This is also the pattern with cadastral survey and mapping coverage. Sample cities of Norway in the survey record between 40% and 70% cadastral survey/mapping coverage, though with a high percentage of land parcels in the cadastral system. Data at the city level in the survey generally seem to be much less complete and much less reliable. However, it is evident that inadequate survey and mapping coverage is a major bottleneck to all aspects of modern urban land development and property rights registration. The inadequate land information at the city level makes it exceedingly difficult for municipal authorities in developing countries to plan their cities appropriately, assess and collect property taxes and thus expand the revenue base to enable the provision of adequate municipal services. For much of the planning, development and management problems of cities to be effectively addressed, appropriate data and information must be available and appropriate survey and map information are basic to this.
Constraints The questionnaire requested respondent countries to list the three most urgent issues hindering the creation of complete cadastral system in their respective countries. The most urgent issues listed (see Table 2) were: • inadequate funding and related constraints; • unavailability or inadequacy of relevant equipment/technology; • inadequate mapping at the appropriate scales; • inadequate skills/manpower; • inadequate land title system; and • lack of national data standards. Issues of inadequate funds, inadequate availability of equipment/technologies, mapping at appropriate scales/coordinate system, inadequate manpower skills and inadequate land titles or real property register were listed mainly by developing countries, while the issues of lack of national data standards and numerous levels of governmental and separate govern-
320
mental organizations involved in the creation and maintenance of the cadastral system were listed mainly by developed countries (Australia and USA). Of the three most urgent issues listed, the first two---funding and inadequate equipment/technology--are closely related and in the realm of public policy. Government and other decision makers at the appropriate levels should make available greater funding resources for these aspects of development. This would enable the acquisition and updating of relevant equipment/technology and support appropriate training in the development and use of these technologies in expanding and enhancing survey and mapping coverage at the appropriate scales. As has been strongly suggested, 9 decision makers, in general, should become more economy minded and take the responsibility to see to it that survey and mapping operations are put on a higher level of priority in the framework of national or territorial deveLopment. It should be stressed that the private sector has a role to play in this, but government must provide the enabling framework for this role. The third listed urgent issue--inadequate mapping at the appropriate scales--may automatically be addressed when the first two issues have been adequately addressed. With respect to unavailability of adequate skills/manpower, the situations remains as found by an earlier survey, ~° that in most industrialized/ developed countries, the survey and mapping education systems produce enough graduates or trainees in an annual equivalence of approximately 5% of the active survey and mapping manpower, thus adequately replacing retirees. For developing countries, however, existing survey and mapping manpower is extremely inadequate for current requirements. It can only be hoped that the increasing sophistication and advances in technology (eg satellite imagery for survey and mapping) could be used to accelerate survey and mapping processes and map production at the various scales, large, medium and small, as required. While the data reflected in this pre-
liminary survey can hardly be said to be complete or entirely reliable, they nevertheless give some indication of the state of land survey and large-scale mapping coverage of the respondent countries and their cities, which should be the first requirement for effective planning and management of land resources and the development activities supported by these resources. Interestingly, the pattern of the findings in this survey is similar to those of earlier and more authoritative surveys by Brandenberger: the limited large-scale survey and mapping coverage of developing countries and corresponding limited availability and mapping skills/manpower. It is clear that there is not yet adequate survey and mapping coverage at the appropriate and functional scales of 1:10000, 1:5 000 or larger, which could for instance, permit complete development of cadastral system and facilitate more effective planning for land and other related developments, for clear identification and assignment of property rights and for systematic regularization of land tenure in an increasingly urbanizing world.
Renewed attention Given the scale of land survey and mapping needs and requirements in developing countries, and the limited existing local surveying and mapping capacities, this is an area that calls for renewed national policy attention. In this regard, and keeping in mind that not one government or group of governments, organization or group of organizations, no matter how capable or generous, has the capacity to address significantly all the land problems of countries and cities of developing countries, the best and probably the most effective avenue through which to start addressing these issues would be through the training of nationals of developing countries and the strengthening of local surveying and mapping institutions and organizations with updated technologies and equipment. Such training would include training in technical and technological skills, a p p r o p r i a t e l y adapted, accompanied by the staged building of infrastructure to support
X
X X
X
X
X
X X
Availability of technology equipment (e.g. GPS and computer-aided cadaatral mapping system
Source: Tabulated from Questionnaire responses,
Country Australia Bahrain Botswana Brunei Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Ethiopia Finland Germany Greece Japan Kenya Latvia Luxembourg Mongolia Nepal Norway Netherlands Sweden Switzerland Turkey USA Zimbabwe
Lack/shortage of funding/Adverse economic situation X X
Inadequate availability of maps at appropdate scale and inadequate co-ordinate system
Table 2. Three most urgent Issues hindering the creation of a complete cadaatral system. Inadequate manpower/specialist skills/expertise
Lack of national data standards X
x (3 ooo)
Numerous levels of governmental and separate governmental organizations involved X
X
Inadequate land titles/real property register
Report the technologies (operations, maintenance, on-going training) locally. The key focus should be technologies which are capable of addressing the backlog of unsurveyed, undocumented and untitled land parcels as well as the scope of future needs. This may call for technical assistance in a northsouth, south-south or even northnorth direction. It is pertinent to recognize that in surveying and mapping matters there are always some inhibitions to foreign involvement, even if it is assistance that is involved. There are usually domestic local/national level interests resisting change and outside involvement. Cultural value systems may present substantial impediments. Superstition may influence a reluctance to survey land and in some circumstances, prevent it. While solution to this constraint may lie eventually in the education and modernization of society, in the short term the success of land projects would rely heavily on the ability of local/indigenous people to be heard, understood, Ij and involved. Not least among the usual opponents of survey and mapping are the military and national security/ intelligence interests, which seek to place security restrictions on various aspects of survey and mapping. It is to be hoped, however, that these security constraints would be eased over time with the development of clear national agency mandates, the establishment of which particular land information products are restricted, the creation of clear information release procedures and the enlistment of security agencies in undertaking new work and in updating existing survey and mapping information products. Growing pressure created by the backlog of work in the area of surveying and mapping in developing countries is already becoming a catalyst for change in attitudes in this area, with some countries m~tmtxng measures to permit the use of private sector surveying and mapping firms to carry out such work, a trend that can be expected to become more significant in the future. Indeed, a UNCHS (Habitat) workshop 12 on the subject emphasized the necessity for improved survey and
322
mapping, acknowledged the constraints, and made suggestions for improving the situation, including: review and revision of technical survey regulations to enable simple and costeffective methods of survey to be introduced and used with flexibility as to standards of survey accuracies; greater flexibility with boundary monumentation requirements, with a view to accepting physical occupation on or near boundary lines as evidence of the legal boundary, and acceptance of the 'general boundaries' rule in land title registration.
Tenure and property rights The point has been stressed in recent years regarding the necessity for granting some sort of tenure to various categories of occupiers of land, e.g. squatters, especially the poor in urban and peri-urban areas of developing countries. Land tenure in this context is defined as the right or manner of holding a landed property. I3 To do this, however, requires adequate knowledge of the characteristics of the land: location, size and boundaries, as well as quality. Accurate knowledge and inventory of these land characteristics are the first essentials to proper planning, development, tenure regularization and management of land. As underlined by the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG):14 In order to endow land with secure rights of tenure . . . a systematically arranged and comprehensive land registration or cadastre system is necessary and has to be established or improved and maintained. Such a system which consists of a Cartographic and a descriptive part, should be capable of serving many purposes.., and should be the base for other parceloriented data banks . . . to facilitate land use and planning decisions. The basis for tenure has therefore to be an appropriately identified, surveyed and mapped plot of land. This adds to the basic necessity of largescale survey and large-scale mapping programmes in developing countries. Good intentions or pious propositions alone about conferring tenure rights on squatters or other users of land are not enough and do not solve the existing problems. The technical prerequisites or preconditions must be
recognized, acknowledged and addressed. This recognition and acknowledgement are also in the interest of societal modernization and longer term development, as one of the land problems in developing countries today is that of adjusting the way in which traditional societies look at and deal with the land in the context of the requirements of various processes of socio-economic d e v e l o p m e n t and modernizaion. Expanding the areas covered by large-scale maps becomes more i m p o r t a n t c o n s i d e r i n g the accelerating urbanization and increasing numbers of urban land development projects.
Conclusion Effective land management requires the existence of land survey and largescale mapping information, because effective and sustainable land management stands or falls largely on the strength of the land survey information on which it must be based. Technology is now available and accessible in developed and developing countries to bring this about, with developments in the technologies of aerial photography, satellite imagery, including the Global Positioning System (GPS), which permits surveyors to measure distances more accurately than ever before, and the vast revolutions in computer technology, including digitization of mapping. In the interest of improving land resources management, land survey and large-scale mapping ought to command priority attention in technical co-operation/ assistance with and among developing countries, and should receive increased national policy and priority attention. It is recognized that there currently exist n u m e r o u s p r o g r a m m e s on aspects of land survey and mapping in several developing countries, including India, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, Qatar, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. The point of this Report is that these programmes should be increased and expanded and should specifically be focused in the first instance on the survey and production of large-scale maps for identifiable settlements:
Report cities, towns and villages. It is such scale of mapping that is appropriate and useful for settlements planning, development and management. Expanded land survey and large-scale mapping programmes are required as technical back-up to development in this sector and for longer term sustainability, these programmes should ideally be anchored on the training of indigenous skills/manpower and strengthening of the capacity of indigenous/national survey and mapping institutions.
Don C 10kpala UNCHS (Habitat) P.O. Box 30030 Nairobi, Kenya 1Okpala, D C 'Land management and aid programmes' Address to the Special Session for Executive Directors of National Surveying Institutions, XIXth FIG Con-
gress, Helsinki, Finland, 10-19 June (1990); South African Journal of Surveying and Mapping 1992 21 (5) 262-274 2Henssen, J L Cadastre, Indispensable for Development p 6 (1990) Inaugural Address at the International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences (ITC) 6 April 1990,-Enschede, The Netherlands. 3'Regional Cooperation and Technology Transfer' Paper submitted by the Secretariat of the United Nations Department for Development Support and Management Services (DDSMS) to the 13th United Nations Regional Cartographic Conference for Asia and the Pacific, Beijing, May 1994 (published in FIG Commissions 3 & 7 Newsletter 13, December 1994 p 4 4Communication from Mr Graham K Lindsay, Secretary-General, International Federation of Surveyors, 3 November 1992 SBrandenberger, A J and Ghosh, S K 'Status of world topographic and cadastral mapping' World Cartography Vol XX pp 1-31, United Nations, New York (1990) (ST/TCD/14); Brandenberger, A M 'Study on the world's surveying and mapping manpower and training facilities' World Cartography Vol XVI pp 3-72, United Na-
tions, New York (1980) (ST/ESA/SER.L/ 16); Brandenberger, A J 'Study on the status of world cartography' World Cartography Vol XIV pp 71-80, United Nations, New York (1976) (ST/ESA/SER.L/ 14) 61bid 5 7Brandenberger and Ghosh op cit Ref 5, 30 8Brandenberger (1976) op cit Ref 5, 72 9Brandenberger and Ghosh op cit Ref 5, 3O l°Brandenberger (1980) op cit Ref 5, 7172 11'A shared understanding of the South Pacific Land Tenure Reform' Survey Directorate, Department of Survey and Land Information, Wellington, New Zealand. FIG Newsletter No 8, July 1992 p 8 12UNCHS (Habitat) Report of the Workshop on Land Registration and Land Information Systems Nairobi, Kenya, 15-18 October 1990 p 6 13International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) Policy Statement on the Surveyor's Contribution to Land Management p 8 (1991) 140p cit Ref 13, 9
323
Poficy,Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 317-323, 1996
Copyright(~ 1996 ElsevierScienceLtd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0264-8377/96 $15.00 + 0.00
Pergamon
Report State of national land survey and large-scale mapping There is still a dearth of appropriate and adequate land survey and large-scale mapping coverage in many countries to facilitate more effective land-related planning, development and management. This situation, in relative terms, applies to both developed and developing countries. Fortuitously, technology is now available and accessible to expand land surveys and the production of large-scale maps at the scales required to support planning and sustainable land development and management. What is now required is official pubfic policy recognition, the attribution of a higher level of priority to this issue, and the allocation of adequate resources to implement an expanded production programme of large-scale maps of cities, towns and villages to facifitate more appropriate settlements and other related land development planning. Copyright 0 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd
The importance (some would say indispensability) of appropriate land survey and mapping to effective land resources planning, development and management cannot be overstressed. The status of land survey and mapping of countries has considerable impact on the exploration and exploitation of the available natural resources of such countries. Effective land policy and m a n a g e m e n t strategies cannot be f o r m u l a t e d a n d s u s t a i n a b l y implemented in the absence of reasonably adequate land survey data and information regarding available land, its location, quality, disposition, natural resources and use. Land survey d a t a facilitate several land mana g e m e n t - r e l a t e d processes such as land reform, settlement development activities or projects, agricultural projects, and environmental protection measures. When, for example, it is said that land transactions in developing countries take so much time, it is not easily imagined how much the absence of appropriate survey/map information contributes to this. Without an appropriate survey of land, it is difficult to plan, subdivide and develop the land for shelter, infrastructure and associated utilities and ser-
vices, to assign appropriate title and tenure to land parcels, or to protect the environment effectively. With survey and mapping at an appropriate scale, the land parcel is identified, dealings in land become easier, cheaper, faster and safer, and property rights are identifiable and better protected. Access to land is consequently improved.~ With the limited adequacy of appropriately surveyed and mapped land parcels in developing countries today, the purchaser in a land transaction often does not know if he has bought a piece of land or a law suit. 2 Land survey and mapping at appropriate scales are therefore the basic starting point for land identification and land data generation, and form the base upon which sound land management must be founded. This information can act as bases for problem identification, both for technical and policy decision making and for implementation. Effective land management requires therefore the existence of adequate land survey information. Great efforts have gone into various aspects of land management and policy in the recent past, and have indeed continued to increase. Less emphasis, however, has been given to survey and
mapping at appropriate scales as the practical and sustainable building block for these activities, probably because many of these activities have been largely project based. Survey and large-scale mapping are required for planning and improving the conditions in human settlements in this environment of accelerating urbanization and increasing numbers of urban development projects. Urban and rural areas need to be appropriately surveyed to produce large-scale up-todate land information for appropriate planning and management of settlements. 3 Indeed, to advance productive dialogue on sustainable improvement of land policy, land management, land tenure improvement or reform and settlements planning, a land survey and mapping information/data inventory is prerequisite. The need for large-scale maps in the effective planning of settlements and the land management thereof cannot be overstressed. Surveying and mapping are critical tools for decision makers in this aspect of sustainable development. Technology for this is now commonly available. The allocation of appropriate resources and the assignment of a higher priority in the scheme of national development are now required.
A human settlements perspective This note takes the human settlements perspective - - focusing on settlements planning, land m a n a g e m e n t , land administration, and cadastre. It takes the view that environmentally sustainable human settlements cannot be attained without adequate physical planning. Special a t t e n t i o n must
317
Report therefore be given to the planning of settlements to accommodate the increasing population. Land use development should be properly managed through appropriate and environmentally compatible land usage planning to ensure that the environment is not irretrievably damaged and that suitable conditions for its sustainable development are established. Such planning requires large-scale (1:10 000, 1:5 000 or larger) 4 maps, especially in urban and peri-urban areas. With a view to identifying critical areas where the levels and scale of surveys and mapping are below those considered necessary to implement effective planning and land management strategies, and drawing and focusing the attention of national government and international development institutions/organizations to this potent tool of land management, UNCHS (Habitat) in collaboration with the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) decided to undertake a preliminary review of the state, level and scale of national land survey and mapping information available, identifying any critical gaps. It was envisaged that the possible outcome of such a review could provide information necessary for formulating and designing or re-designing programmes that could improve the situation. The objective is to draw and focus attention on the state of national and city land survey and mapping information available, at the relevant planning scales, with a view to identifying and highlighting gaps and associated needs in land information which could possibly assist in formulating and developing more appropriate programmes to improve the situation. It also seeks to draw attention to this area as a possible new priority for technical cooperation and assistance. This Report is a preliminary analysis of that review.
The questionnaire survey For this exercise, a mail questionnaire survey was conducted. The survey frame consisted of a database of 70 FIG Member Countries (supplied by the F I G Secretariat), supplemented
318
by 45 other selected countries. Questionnaires were ultimately sent to 115 c o u n t r i e s ' s u r v e y and m a p p i n g authorities/organizations requesting data/information on survey and mapping coverage at various scales, mapping characteristics, cadastral survey coverage, number of land parcels in the land register, etc. Responses were received from 24 countries (14 developed countries and 10 developing countries). Table 1 is a summary of the responses reflecting the survey and mapping status of the respondent countries. Analysis o f data responses The returns received indicate that, except for Ethiopia, Mongolia, Nepal and Sweden, practically all countries are by now covered 100% by topographic survey and mapping at a scale of 1:100 000 or smaller; some in large part at the small to medium scales of between 1:50 000 and 1:25 000. At scales of 1:25 000 or larger, a fair amount of detail can be picked up or built in. At the more functional scale of 1:10 000 or larger, some countries, such as Bahrain, Brunei, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Switzerland, have a 95100% coverage by survey and mapping. At this scale, Australia is only covered 2.5%, Japan 26%, Mongolia 0.1%, Nepal 5% and USA 25%, The discernible pattern is that (with the possible exception of Bahrain), the few developing countries repres e n t e d in the survey (Botswana, Kenya, Mongolia, Nepal and Zimbabwe) showed low percentage survey and mapping coverage at scales of 1:10 000 or larger. Australia's 2.5% coverage at this scale may be partly explained by the enormous expanse of the country that is still uninhabited. The 25% and 26% coverage at this scale by the United States and Japan, respectively, is somewhat surprising, although in the case of the United States, the lack of national data standards at the various levels (state and local governments) as well as the separate governmental organizations involved may partially explain the apparent relatively low coverage. This may
also possibly be due to inadequate access to the information rather than lack of survey and mapping at this scale. At the national level, cadastral survey/map coverage varies among respondent countries, ranging from 80100% in some European countries to less than 10% in some developing countries. Most of the countries are covered by land use and natural resources surveys and mapping, largely at small to medium scale levels. It is pertinent to note that Brandenburger et al. 5 had, over the past four d e c a d e s (1968-990), p e r i o d i c a l l y undertaken surveys and studies (on a much larger scale than the present one) on the subject of 'Status of World Topographic and Cadastral Mapping' and related issues, under the auspices of the United Nations. These surveys have generally reviewed four scale ranges of map coverage: Range I, 1:25 000 or larger; Range II, 1:50 000; Range III, 1:100000; Range IV, 1:250 000. These surveys showed (as the current survey shows) varying low percentage coverage in the 1:25 000 or larger scale range in the developing countries of Africa and South America, but higher coverage in this scale range in the developed countries of Europe and North America. As in the current survey, the Brandenburger studies noted higher survey and map coverage at the medium scale ranges of 1:100 000/1:50 000, although it was observed that given the annual progress rate of coverage in this scale range (1:3% or less), 6 the recommendation that there should be full topographic map coverage of the land area of the world at the important ranges 1:50 000/1:100 000 by the year 2000 has not been m e t ] It is reasonable to assume that map production should progress at least as rapidly as the population growth rate. s This condition is said to have been met only in four regions: North America, Europe, the former USSR and Oceania. A t the city level At the city level there is uniformly complete survey and mapping coverage at the scale of 1:10 000 or smaller, but at the scale of 1:5 000 or larger,
4 270
Norway
254 521 10 000
9.372m 320 245
41 000 441 41 285 780 000
324 000
147 362
1 566 500
64 588 2 586
587 900
377 000
338 000 356 854 130 000
Area (kin =) 7 692 695.3 582 000 5 847 78 863.6 41 100 43.3 1.2m
100 100
100 100 100 86.75
100 (1:100 000) 100 (1:50 000) 100
100 100
100
100
n/a: not applicable.
100 40.29
100 (1:50 000) 100 0 100 100
15
28
61% at 1:50 000 100 100
t00
% with Coverage at topo area 1:25 000 or coverage smaller 100 99.7 100 100 40 . . 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 30 (1:250 000) (1:50 000) 100 100 100 100 100 100
Source: Tabulated from Questionnaire Survey responses.
USA Zimbabwe
500 500 723 000
18 400
Nepal
14 8 6 50
2 156
Mongolia
Netherlands Sweden Switzerland Turkey
2 600 389.8
123 587 (1992) 24 000
5 000 77 572 10 050
Latvia Luxembou rg
Kenya
Japan
Finland Germany Greece
Survey and mapping coverage Population Country (thousands) Australia 17 581 Bahrain 508 Botswana 1 350 Brunei 260 Czech Republic 10 350 Denmark 5 146 Estonia 600 Ethiopia 50 000
Table 1. National survey/mapping (including cadastral) status.
100 63 95 86.75 (1:50 000) 25 -
60
5
0.1
100 100
na
26
80 100 95
% 1:10 0O0 or larger survey map coverage 2.5 100 . 100 100 100 100 na
60 100 90 70 93.21 urban 61.55 rural 100 46
-
25 100 (1:25 000) 0
na
36
100 100 n/a
% cedastral survey map coverage 99 46 . 37 100 100 6
500 000 750 000
300m .
.
3 000 325 000 40m
7.3m
2.3m
-
-
na
230 000
1.9 m 61.5 x 10 n/a
No. of parcels in land register 9.5m 150 000 . . 36 300 11 988 360 2 500 000 150
60
96
100 100 80
-
-
3 100
na
18
100 100 n/a
.
% of land parcels In cadaatral system 92 73 . 37 100 100 0.1
100 .
100 90 50 -
100
100 (1:100 000) 100
100 100
100 (1:200 000) na
100 100 50
% total areas with land use plan/mop 79 60 . 0 ? 100 0.1
.
100 50 30 100 (1:25 000) 100
80
100 (1:100 000) -
100 50
100 100 100 (1:50 000) 100 (1:200 000) na
% area with natural resources survey/ mappingcovernge 95 . . 0 ? 100 25
100
100 20 100 -
70
100 (1:100 000)
100 50
100 (1:200 000) na
5 689 ?
4 0(30 ? 832 4 500
2 290
-
-
117 50
9 680 (1993) na
1 200 6 200 470
0 1 350 940 153
0 100 soil (100%)
100 100 -
No. of land surveyors 3 340 na
% of area with thematic mapping coverage 95 -
500
3 800 ?
? 2 664 -
na
-
-
-
na
1 787
200 6 200 n/a
0 na 540 -
No. of town/urban plannera 2 600 -
Report developing countries cities are much less covered. This is also the pattern with cadastral survey and mapping coverage. Sample cities of Norway in the survey record between 40% and 70% cadastral survey/mapping coverage, though with a high percentage of land parcels in the cadastral system. Data at the city level in the survey generally seem to be much less complete and much less reliable. However, it is evident that inadequate survey and mapping coverage is a major bottleneck to all aspects of modern urban land development and property rights registration. The inadequate land information at the city level makes it exceedingly difficult for municipal authorities in developing countries to plan their cities appropriately, assess and collect property taxes and thus expand the revenue base to enable the provision of adequate municipal services. For much of the planning, development and management problems of cities to be effectively addressed, appropriate data and information must be available and appropriate survey and map information are basic to this.
Constraints The questionnaire requested respondent countries to list the three most urgent issues hindering the creation of complete cadastral system in their respective countries. The most urgent issues listed (see Table 2) were: • inadequate funding and related constraints; • unavailability or inadequacy of relevant equipment/technology; • inadequate mapping at the appropriate scales; • inadequate skills/manpower; • inadequate land title system; and • lack of national data standards. Issues of inadequate funds, inadequate availability of equipment/technologies, mapping at appropriate scales/coordinate system, inadequate manpower skills and inadequate land titles or real property register were listed mainly by developing countries, while the issues of lack of national data standards and numerous levels of governmental and separate govern-
320
mental organizations involved in the creation and maintenance of the cadastral system were listed mainly by developed countries (Australia and USA). Of the three most urgent issues listed, the first two---funding and inadequate equipment/technology--are closely related and in the realm of public policy. Government and other decision makers at the appropriate levels should make available greater funding resources for these aspects of development. This would enable the acquisition and updating of relevant equipment/technology and support appropriate training in the development and use of these technologies in expanding and enhancing survey and mapping coverage at the appropriate scales. As has been strongly suggested, 9 decision makers, in general, should become more economy minded and take the responsibility to see to it that survey and mapping operations are put on a higher level of priority in the framework of national or territorial deveLopment. It should be stressed that the private sector has a role to play in this, but government must provide the enabling framework for this role. The third listed urgent issue--inadequate mapping at the appropriate scales--may automatically be addressed when the first two issues have been adequately addressed. With respect to unavailability of adequate skills/manpower, the situations remains as found by an earlier survey, ~° that in most industrialized/ developed countries, the survey and mapping education systems produce enough graduates or trainees in an annual equivalence of approximately 5% of the active survey and mapping manpower, thus adequately replacing retirees. For developing countries, however, existing survey and mapping manpower is extremely inadequate for current requirements. It can only be hoped that the increasing sophistication and advances in technology (eg satellite imagery for survey and mapping) could be used to accelerate survey and mapping processes and map production at the various scales, large, medium and small, as required. While the data reflected in this pre-
liminary survey can hardly be said to be complete or entirely reliable, they nevertheless give some indication of the state of land survey and large-scale mapping coverage of the respondent countries and their cities, which should be the first requirement for effective planning and management of land resources and the development activities supported by these resources. Interestingly, the pattern of the findings in this survey is similar to those of earlier and more authoritative surveys by Brandenberger: the limited large-scale survey and mapping coverage of developing countries and corresponding limited availability and mapping skills/manpower. It is clear that there is not yet adequate survey and mapping coverage at the appropriate and functional scales of 1:10000, 1:5 000 or larger, which could for instance, permit complete development of cadastral system and facilitate more effective planning for land and other related developments, for clear identification and assignment of property rights and for systematic regularization of land tenure in an increasingly urbanizing world.
Renewed attention Given the scale of land survey and mapping needs and requirements in developing countries, and the limited existing local surveying and mapping capacities, this is an area that calls for renewed national policy attention. In this regard, and keeping in mind that not one government or group of governments, organization or group of organizations, no matter how capable or generous, has the capacity to address significantly all the land problems of countries and cities of developing countries, the best and probably the most effective avenue through which to start addressing these issues would be through the training of nationals of developing countries and the strengthening of local surveying and mapping institutions and organizations with updated technologies and equipment. Such training would include training in technical and technological skills, a p p r o p r i a t e l y adapted, accompanied by the staged building of infrastructure to support
X
X X
X
X
X
X X
Availability of technology equipment (e.g. GPS and computer-aided cadaatral mapping system
Source: Tabulated from Questionnaire responses,
Country Australia Bahrain Botswana Brunei Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Ethiopia Finland Germany Greece Japan Kenya Latvia Luxembourg Mongolia Nepal Norway Netherlands Sweden Switzerland Turkey USA Zimbabwe
Lack/shortage of funding/Adverse economic situation X X
Inadequate availability of maps at appropdate scale and inadequate co-ordinate system
Table 2. Three most urgent Issues hindering the creation of a complete cadaatral system. Inadequate manpower/specialist skills/expertise
Lack of national data standards X
x (3 ooo)
Numerous levels of governmental and separate governmental organizations involved X
X
Inadequate land titles/real property register
Report the technologies (operations, maintenance, on-going training) locally. The key focus should be technologies which are capable of addressing the backlog of unsurveyed, undocumented and untitled land parcels as well as the scope of future needs. This may call for technical assistance in a northsouth, south-south or even northnorth direction. It is pertinent to recognize that in surveying and mapping matters there are always some inhibitions to foreign involvement, even if it is assistance that is involved. There are usually domestic local/national level interests resisting change and outside involvement. Cultural value systems may present substantial impediments. Superstition may influence a reluctance to survey land and in some circumstances, prevent it. While solution to this constraint may lie eventually in the education and modernization of society, in the short term the success of land projects would rely heavily on the ability of local/indigenous people to be heard, understood, Ij and involved. Not least among the usual opponents of survey and mapping are the military and national security/ intelligence interests, which seek to place security restrictions on various aspects of survey and mapping. It is to be hoped, however, that these security constraints would be eased over time with the development of clear national agency mandates, the establishment of which particular land information products are restricted, the creation of clear information release procedures and the enlistment of security agencies in undertaking new work and in updating existing survey and mapping information products. Growing pressure created by the backlog of work in the area of surveying and mapping in developing countries is already becoming a catalyst for change in attitudes in this area, with some countries m~tmtxng measures to permit the use of private sector surveying and mapping firms to carry out such work, a trend that can be expected to become more significant in the future. Indeed, a UNCHS (Habitat) workshop 12 on the subject emphasized the necessity for improved survey and
322
mapping, acknowledged the constraints, and made suggestions for improving the situation, including: review and revision of technical survey regulations to enable simple and costeffective methods of survey to be introduced and used with flexibility as to standards of survey accuracies; greater flexibility with boundary monumentation requirements, with a view to accepting physical occupation on or near boundary lines as evidence of the legal boundary, and acceptance of the 'general boundaries' rule in land title registration.
Tenure and property rights The point has been stressed in recent years regarding the necessity for granting some sort of tenure to various categories of occupiers of land, e.g. squatters, especially the poor in urban and peri-urban areas of developing countries. Land tenure in this context is defined as the right or manner of holding a landed property. I3 To do this, however, requires adequate knowledge of the characteristics of the land: location, size and boundaries, as well as quality. Accurate knowledge and inventory of these land characteristics are the first essentials to proper planning, development, tenure regularization and management of land. As underlined by the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG):14 In order to endow land with secure rights of tenure . . . a systematically arranged and comprehensive land registration or cadastre system is necessary and has to be established or improved and maintained. Such a system which consists of a Cartographic and a descriptive part, should be capable of serving many purposes.., and should be the base for other parceloriented data banks . . . to facilitate land use and planning decisions. The basis for tenure has therefore to be an appropriately identified, surveyed and mapped plot of land. This adds to the basic necessity of largescale survey and large-scale mapping programmes in developing countries. Good intentions or pious propositions alone about conferring tenure rights on squatters or other users of land are not enough and do not solve the existing problems. The technical prerequisites or preconditions must be
recognized, acknowledged and addressed. This recognition and acknowledgement are also in the interest of societal modernization and longer term development, as one of the land problems in developing countries today is that of adjusting the way in which traditional societies look at and deal with the land in the context of the requirements of various processes of socio-economic d e v e l o p m e n t and modernizaion. Expanding the areas covered by large-scale maps becomes more i m p o r t a n t c o n s i d e r i n g the accelerating urbanization and increasing numbers of urban land development projects.
Conclusion Effective land management requires the existence of land survey and largescale mapping information, because effective and sustainable land management stands or falls largely on the strength of the land survey information on which it must be based. Technology is now available and accessible in developed and developing countries to bring this about, with developments in the technologies of aerial photography, satellite imagery, including the Global Positioning System (GPS), which permits surveyors to measure distances more accurately than ever before, and the vast revolutions in computer technology, including digitization of mapping. In the interest of improving land resources management, land survey and large-scale mapping ought to command priority attention in technical co-operation/ assistance with and among developing countries, and should receive increased national policy and priority attention. It is recognized that there currently exist n u m e r o u s p r o g r a m m e s on aspects of land survey and mapping in several developing countries, including India, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, Qatar, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. The point of this Report is that these programmes should be increased and expanded and should specifically be focused in the first instance on the survey and production of large-scale maps for identifiable settlements:
Report cities, towns and villages. It is such scale of mapping that is appropriate and useful for settlements planning, development and management. Expanded land survey and large-scale mapping programmes are required as technical back-up to development in this sector and for longer term sustainability, these programmes should ideally be anchored on the training of indigenous skills/manpower and strengthening of the capacity of indigenous/national survey and mapping institutions.
Don C 10kpala UNCHS (Habitat) P.O. Box 30030 Nairobi, Kenya 1Okpala, D C 'Land management and aid programmes' Address to the Special Session for Executive Directors of National Surveying Institutions, XIXth FIG Con-
gress, Helsinki, Finland, 10-19 June (1990); South African Journal of Surveying and Mapping 1992 21 (5) 262-274 2Henssen, J L Cadastre, Indispensable for Development p 6 (1990) Inaugural Address at the International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences (ITC) 6 April 1990,-Enschede, The Netherlands. 3'Regional Cooperation and Technology Transfer' Paper submitted by the Secretariat of the United Nations Department for Development Support and Management Services (DDSMS) to the 13th United Nations Regional Cartographic Conference for Asia and the Pacific, Beijing, May 1994 (published in FIG Commissions 3 & 7 Newsletter 13, December 1994 p 4 4Communication from Mr Graham K Lindsay, Secretary-General, International Federation of Surveyors, 3 November 1992 SBrandenberger, A J and Ghosh, S K 'Status of world topographic and cadastral mapping' World Cartography Vol XX pp 1-31, United Nations, New York (1990) (ST/TCD/14); Brandenberger, A M 'Study on the world's surveying and mapping manpower and training facilities' World Cartography Vol XVI pp 3-72, United Na-
tions, New York (1980) (ST/ESA/SER.L/ 16); Brandenberger, A J 'Study on the status of world cartography' World Cartography Vol XIV pp 71-80, United Nations, New York (1976) (ST/ESA/SER.L/ 14) 61bid 5 7Brandenberger and Ghosh op cit Ref 5, 30 8Brandenberger (1976) op cit Ref 5, 72 9Brandenberger and Ghosh op cit Ref 5, 3O l°Brandenberger (1980) op cit Ref 5, 7172 11'A shared understanding of the South Pacific Land Tenure Reform' Survey Directorate, Department of Survey and Land Information, Wellington, New Zealand. FIG Newsletter No 8, July 1992 p 8 12UNCHS (Habitat) Report of the Workshop on Land Registration and Land Information Systems Nairobi, Kenya, 15-18 October 1990 p 6 13International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) Policy Statement on the Surveyor's Contribution to Land Management p 8 (1991) 140p cit Ref 13, 9
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