Agenda 2030 makes it possible for countries to monitor the proportion of the total adult population with secure tenure rights to land. This indicator focuses on two components of tenure security that work to advance the concept of the continuum of tenure rights:
- The proportion of the adult population with documented tenure rights that are legally recognized by governments.
- The proportion of the adult population who perceive their tenure rights as legally secure, regardless of whether these rights are documented.
Legal documentation goes beyond land ownership by title deed and includes other legally enforceable documentation of user rights. For this component, National Statistical Offices (NSOs) will use administrative data from government registries and cadaster systems.
Security of tenure is the certainty that a person’s rights to land will be recognized by others and protected in cases of specific challenges. People with insecure tenure face the risk that their rights to land will be threatened by competing claims, and even lost as a result of eviction.
Measuring perception of tenure security entails capturing the extent to which individuals, households and communities perceive their tenure as secure and measuring their fears of threats to their land rights. Data on perception of tenure security will be collected through national population surveys (survey data). In addition to informal tenure rights holders, landholders with legally documented land rights may still feel that their land rights are vulnerable to infringement by outsiders.
Indicator 1.4.2 covers both rural and urban tenure. Indicator 1.4.2 is classified by the Inter-agency and Expert Group on the Sustainable Development Goals (IAEG-SDGs) as Tier III. This means the indicator’s conceptual clarity and the methodology for monitoring the indicator is currently being developed, and the indicator’s baseline data is being compiled.
GLII and the Global Donor Working Group on Land are supporting the efforts of the custodian agencies to elevate indicator 1.4.2 to Tier II status at the IAEG-SDGs meeting in November 2017. UNSD has announced that the 6th Meeting of the IAEG-SDGs will take place in Manama, Bahrain from 11-14 November 2017. Custodian agencies are expected to submit their request for reclassification including key documents in support of their request by October 2, 2017.
The ultimate goal of the custodian agencies and the land community at large is to achieve a Tier I status by end of 2018, when most countries will be able to report on this indicator on a regular basis.
Selected indicators on the Land Portal
Other related indicators
| Indicator | Min-Max Number of years |
Countries / Obs | Min / Max Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Insecure | |||
| Somewhat insecure | |||
| Secure | |||
| Percent of Indigenous and Community Lands - Formally recognised | |||
| Percent of Indigenous and Community Lands - Not formally recognised | |||
| Population living in slums (% of urban population) | |||
| Informal documentation | |||
| Informal documentation |
News and Blogs
There is broad global agreement that secure property rights help eradicate poverty and that securing women’s land rights reduces gender inequality.
There’s been quite a hubbub in the land community the last month over the reclassification of two land indicators from ‘Tier III’ to ‘Tier II’. So what’s this all about? For the uninitiated, each SDG indicator has to go through a validation process before it gets included in the formal SDG reporting process that will run from 2020 to 2030.
On Nov. 13 in Bahrain, the Inter-Agency Expert Group on the Sustainable Development Goal Indicators voted to reclassify SDG Land Indicator 1.4.2 from Tier III to Tier II status. This is a significant win for the property rights community, and a validation that a coordinated effort from many different players can indeed make a difference.
However, the road there was not easy.
On 12th November 2017, the 6th meeting of the Inter-agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGs) reached a major decision to reclassify tenure security Indicator 1.4.2 from Tier III to II in Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain. This decision marks the beginning of a global journey to monitor tenure security for all, using comparable land indicators for globally comparable data.
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Library Resources
This report presents the results of the multi-country assessment carried out in 17 countries across the world. The findings of this assessment is expected to directly inform the work of the co-custodian agencies for land Indicator 1.4.2 (UN-Habitat and World Bank) in formulating a coherent capacity development strategy for NSOs at country level, and strengthen their collaboration with land agencies for enhanced data infrastructure needed to regularly report on this indicator.
The document details the agreements of the Expert Group meeting on a set of defined questions that need to be asked in order to properly measure 1.4.2.
Legally recognized and secure land and resource rights are fundamental to the advancement of global peace, prosperity, and sustainability. From the development of human cultures to the realization of democracy itself, tenure security underpins the very fabric of human society and our relationship to the natural environment. Today, insecure tenure rights threaten the livelihoods and wellbeing of a third of the world’s population, and with it, the very future of our planet.
This bulletin is prepared by the Friends of the Custodians Committee. The objective is to share timely information about the SDG land indicator 1.4.2 and support its reclassification from Tier III to Tier I by October 2018.
Methodological supporting document for land indicator under SGD Goal 1, target 1.4.2
Indicator details
Experts reach consensus on measuring Indicator 1.4.2.
Experts agree on a set of household survey questions that will be included in the global and national-level surveys and censuses to measure how secure peoples’ land and property rights are.
IAEG-SDG recommends deleting Target 1.4
Global Donor Working Group on Land (GDWGL) confronts IAEG-SDG recommendation to delete Target 1.4.
3rd Expert Group Meeting: Using Administrative Data to Monitor SDG land
Particularly, the objectives of this EGM were to agree on the methodology to monitor indicator 1.4.2 pertaining to legally documented rights using administrative data and to assess availability of existing data and explore ways of institutionalizing reporting at country and regional level.
Sixth meeting of the IAEG-SDGs
Particularly the objectives of this meeting have been to review tier classification. The work of those in the land sector came to fruition when indicator 1.4.2 was finally bumped from Tier III to Tier II status.
United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat)
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