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УДК 349.417/.418
Готтфрид Конечный
Ганноверский университет им. Лейбница
Германия
Тел/факс: 0049-511-762-2483 E-mail: konecny@ipi.uni-hannover. de
ГЕОПРОСТРАНСТВЕННАЯ КАДАСТРОВАЯ ОСНОВА КАК НЕПРЕМЕННОЕ УСЛОВИЕ ДЛЯ РАЦИОНАЛЬНОГО ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЯ ЗЕМЕЛЬНЫХ РЕСУРСОВ
Gottfried Konecny
Emeritus Professor
Leibniz University Hannover
Institute for Photogrammetry and Geoinformation
Germany
Office/Fax: 0049-511-762-2483 E-mail: konecny@ipi.uni-hannover. de
A GEOCODED CADASTRAL FABRIC AS PRECONDITION FOR A SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Land as Dead Capital
The possession of capital and of land rights is of course a philosophical and a political question. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679) said: “man is a wolf”, he will grab where he can. Adam Smith (1723 - 1790) means capital means progress, but the sovereign must control its just use.
Karl Marx (1818 - 1883) said: capital needs to be restributed by the proletariate. Land should belong to the public.
Capital and government are a dynamic issue since these times up until the present.
The economist Milton Friedman in the USA (1912 - 2006) was a strong representative of neo-liberalism: he wanted minimal state involvement, privatisation which was to create efficiency in business and meant riches for a few and increase of poverty.
John Mainard Kaynes of Scotland (1883 - 1946) was the originator of F.D. Roosevelt's “New Deal” - philosophy to combat the World Economic Crisis of 1929. He suggested that the state must take an active role to curtail injustices by private greed. Follower of Kaynes is the social market economy of Germany and perhaps the new Chinese model. An economist relating to capital and land is Hernando de Soto of Peru, born 1941. He claims, not only capital and labour are sources of economic
growth, but also land used as a collateral for borrowing. This requires security of transactions. In his book “The Mystery of Capital” (ISBN 3871344494) published in 2000 he states:
- Land is not only a property owned by someone,
- It can also serve as collateral for conversion of economic elements: capital -
labour - land - knowledge,
- Western (capitalistic) nations benefit from this.
- The developing and socialistic world does not, since it lacks the infrastructure (real estate laws and their enforcements, cadastral information systems); this creates lack of mortgageable values, lack of transparency, leading to illegal settlements and to theft of resources.
Hernando de Soto claims:
- “At the time of the biggest triumph of capitalism during the transformation
of the Soviet Union, capitalism started to face the greatest crisis”.
- “Freedom of the market has been exchanged of the cruelty of markets”,
- “American stocks and bonds have been all the more secure as the rest of the world became unsecure”, at least until the recent financial crisis. Naomi Klein of Canada called Milton Friedman a disaster capitalist.
- “Western Europe wants to avoid the Terror Economy”
- “Adam Smith's capitalism permitted the exchange of products”,
- “Capitalism succeeded in the West because of an existing legal and technical infrastructure, but not in the developing countries”.
- “The infrastructure permits networking of people and safeguard of transactions”.
Hernando de Soto's book is full of examples to confirm his statements:
Egypt and Haiti are good examples for developing countries. Egypt had in 1947 a population of 6,2 Million and in 1969 23,4 Million. Haiti had 1959 140 thousand people and in 1988 1.5 Million.
These examples show growing illegality of property transactions in the developing countries. In Egypt 77 steps at 31 offices are required to legalize property and in Haiti 11 steps are required to rent or buy property. This may take 12 years.
The governments realize, that laws are not observed with a consequence of corruption, poverty and force. The consequence is that land becomes a “dead capital”.
Why is that so?
- No formal system exists to identify land rights and to guarantee them to the holders.
- Even if a rudimentary and antiquated system exists, it takes too long and costs too much for a registered transaction.
- Therefore transfers are made illegally without public records, and the rights remain insecure.
- Banks will not give credit for unsecure rights.
In Egypt 92 % of urban housing is illegal and 81 % of rural housing is illegal. This amounts to about 195 Billion $ dead capital in urban areas and 46 Billion $ in rural areas.
In Haiti 68 % of urban housing is illegal as well as 97 % of rural housing is illegal. This amounts to 2 Billion $ dead capital in urban and 3 Billion $ dead capital in rural areas.
In Egypt the dead capital is 30 times the market value of the local business, 6 times he value of the local bank deposits, 116 times the state agency capital and 55 times the foreign direct investments.
In Haiti the corresponding values are 4 times, 11 times, 9 times and 158 times.
Cadastral Land Registration Systems
The International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) has concerned itself with land registration and the property cadastre. Without such a land registration system there can be no security of land rights.
- About 30 to 50 countries out of 210 have an operational cadastral registration system,
- Another 50 countries are in the process of establishing one,
- The reminder of 110 to 130 countries do not have a land registry system, and they do not have the funds to establish one.
- Hernando de soto has been a primary promoter of land registration systems,
- His philosophy was adopted by the world bank and by international donors in support of land registration, since secure land rights avoid conflicts, help good governance and can be used as collateral in a widened capital market.
- In the implementation of land registration systems most problems are institutional and political.
Cadastre 2014 (or 2025)
The FIG has suggested “cadastre 2014” (which was renamed cadastre 2025 at the last FIG congress in Sydney 2010) as the ideal model for the technical implementation of land registration systems. It has the following components:
- The principle unit is the land object, which can manage land parcels and zones including restrictions and responsibilities
- The key document is the land title
- Land objects reflect the laws for their definition
- Cadastral maps are replaced by their digital models
- Geocoding of these by gps/gnss procedures to reference frames is required
- Topology in the geometric relations assures a complete, non overlapping parcel fabric
- The accuracy of the parcel fabric coordinates in the database can be improved systematically or sporadically by subsequent more accurate surveys.
To transfer historical property records based on often inadequate or nonexistent control surveys and collected on the basis of non-adequate deeds the establishment of cadastral and land registration laws is required.
- Following the setup of the legal framework, reasonable technical specifications are necessary to establish the system.
- The establishment of a cadastral registration system, however, is useless unless an administrative infrastructure is created for the continuous and timely update of the parcel fabric and the land registration.
Following the suggestions of “cadastre 2014 (2025) will assure:
- That land parcels and objects will not overlap,
- That maps and registers are all in digital form for transparent and effective
viewing and dissemination,
- That a minimization of human labour will be achieved by automation.
The basic simple structure is simple:
- A uniquely defined land object in a geocoded topological structure is linked to a claimant and to a type of right.
- Land objects may be private parcels, encumbrances, buildings, land use areas, environmentally protected objects or informal land areas.
- If the geometry of land objects changes, new land objects with the new geometry are created for the areas affected with a unique new identification,
- This permits storage of a versioned parcel fabric,
- If a claimant changes this also permits versioned content of the database.
Land administration
According to the book on “Land Administration for Sustainable Development” by Williamson, Enemark, Wallace and Rajabifard (ESRI Press 2010), the cadastral land registration system is a necessary tool to monitor land tenure, land value, land use and land in development within a land information infrastructure for economic, social and environmental sustainable development.
The cadastral system then has a broad applicability not only to serve as a property protection cadastre, but also as a basis for collecting property tax, and furthermore to act in an SDI as a multipurpose cadastre.
The multipurpose cadastre has the distinct advantage over topographic mapping procedures and over aerial and space imaging, that it can update land objects (parcels, buildings, roads) in near real time on a transaction basis, while topographic mapping
and imaging can reasonably only be carried out at certain time intervals (1 to 10 years), during which time the information becomes out of date.
New Technology
New technology now makes it possible, that tasks, which were not affordable before, have now become possible. The technologies are:
- Satellite positioning to decimeter accuracy (GNSS-GPS-PPP) globally and to centimeter accuracy (GNSS-GPS-CORS) locally
- Imaging and ortho image generation by digital photography for ground sample distances (GSD’s) of about 10 cm for local and regional requirements
- Satellite imagery restitution for GSD’s of about 50 cm for global requirements
- Computer technology advances which according to Moore's law still grow exponentially with respect to computing speed, storage and networking capability
- Database technology in from of object relational data bases which are now available.
Types of Existing Cadastral Land Registration Systems
International literature on cadastral land registration systems is quite heterogeneous and often lacks a systematic approach. Stig Enemark has for the first time in the quoted book on “Land Administration for Sustainable Development” attempted to classify the existing land registration systems into 3 major types, even though there are huge quality differences for each type in the different countries:
1) The French, Latin, US Style deed systems.
They rely on the legal profession to maintain the deed system. The survey aspects to define the parcel geometry are rather weak (USA) or non-existent (Latin America). But in France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands reliable data systems have been produced.
2) The German land book title system, in which the titles are contained in a land book, which has public belief and which is supported by a reliable geocoded cadastral map represents perhaps the most elaborate effort, which is in use in central and northern Europe, on the Balkan, in Turkey and in Egypt (if used!), in Japan and recently in China.
3) The English style Torrens Title System which is practised in the UK, in Ireland, in Australia and New Zealand, in Canada and in Common Wealth oriented Subsahara Africa. There the title serves as evidence.
One of the complexities is that in some Torrens title systems (e. g. UK) the geometric database is maintained (with a 6 months update guarantee) by topographies mapping for buildings, roads and utility features onto which a cadastral general boundary overlay is superimposed.
For the German land book title system on the contrary, the update for land parcels and buildings is on transaction in near real time, while the other topographies
features one updated no sooner than in 5 years or more. Furthermore the State guarantees title and boundaries.
This difference may not be very important in Europe, were working land registration systems exist. But it is vital in developing countries, which have to establish land registration systems in form of base maps by modern technology at least expense, in the shortest time.
The alternatives to produce either a cadastral fabric or a general base map by GPS supported ground surveys, by aerial digital mapping or by use of high resolution satellite imagery are of vital significance for the developing world.
World Bank Support for the Establishment of Land Registration Systems
With the transformation of economies of the formerly socialist Sovjet Union to a free market economy the World Back has supported projects in 23 counties of that region with a sum of 1.4 billion dollars.
Success factors have been named in these projects as follows:
1) User involvement
2) Support from seniors management
3) Clearly defined requirements
4) Good planning
5) Realistic expectations
6) Phased approach
7) Competent personnel
Practical implementations nevertheless suffer from lack of administration cooperation (lack of spatial data infrastructure), lack of understanding (educational and professional efforts) or lack of good governance. But it has been shown, that the establishment of cadastral and land administration systems within a 5 to 10 year period at reasonable cost is possible, if all forces are united.
Conclusion
In retrospect it can be said:
- Technology in easy,
- Good governance and good management are difficult.
© G. Konecny, 2011
