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 supported the efforts of the custodian agencies to elevate indicator 1.4.2 to Tier II status at the IAEG-SDGs meeting in November 2017.
| 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 | |||
| Formal documentation |
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All the UN member states have committed to achieve the Sustainable Development Targets by 2030. However, there is a clear gap between what is being committed and the delivery of the commitments. For example, in 2020 National Voluntary Reports only seven countries reported on specific land targets. No country reported on the all three key land targets.
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Acknowledging the centrality of land issues to end hunger and achieve sustainable development, countries have agreed to meet ambitious land targets by 2030. Five years into the SDGs, persistent land insecurity, land evictions, threats to land rights defenders and other challenges show that the land promises are not being delivered.
As all eyes, hearts and minds focus on the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) garnered attention on Tuesday when a new UN report revealed that only ten countries in the European region have levels of air pollution below the World Health Organization (WHO) recomme
Nearly five years into the implementation of the ground breaking global commitments of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, the time is upon us to consider what has been accomplished so far and to set the tone for action that will enable the world to meet its ambitious goals.
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Library Resources
What can we learn from the 2020 Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) and the SDG Indicators’ Global Database?
In 2015 we celebrated world leaders’ recognition of the foundational and strategic role that secure land rights for all –women and men, regardless of ethnicity, religion, place of residence, or civil, economic, social, or political status—must play to achieve a world free of poverty, hunger and systemic gender discrimination.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides a conceptual framework of 17 goals and 169 targets. An abundance of interlinkages exists between them. Land targets are core to achieving most of the SDGs including poverty eradication, food security, gender equality and empowerment of women, adequate housing and urban development, mitigating and adapting to climate change, reducing and preventing land degradation, and fostering peace and stability for prosperity.
This study provides a case study of the mango value chain in Kenya and seeks to better understand key linkages between land rights and project outcomes. It explores (1) whether and how land rights for Kenya’s mango farmers affect project uptake and success; and (2) what (if any) are this project’s unintended consequences on land tenure in implementation areas.
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.
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.
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