The central themes of this book are customary law, traditional leadership and local land management. International policy is currently witnessing a renewed interest in customary tenure systems and traditional leadership, through which it aims to enhance the efficiency of local governance, and create general access to and secure rights in land. Contrary to these ideas, practice reveals a lack of security of customary tenure in many areas.

The use of land consolidation on customary lands has been limited, though land fragmentation persists. Land fragmentation on customary lands has two main causes—the nature of the customary land tenure system, and the somewhat linked agricultural system. Since attempts to increase food productivity on customary lands have involved fertilisation and mechanisation on the small and scattered farmlands, these approaches have fallen short of increasing food productivity.

This white paper provides an overview of the land administration domain and proposes actions needed for design and development of implementation standards this domain. A close cooperation between the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and ISO is expected to accelerate those developments. A huge task is waiting: the establishment of land rights for all: young and old, rich and poor, male and female. Data on many millions of parcels, spatial units, (use-) rights, persons, and parties have to be collected, linked, maintained, and published.

A significant number of undocumented people-to-land relationships exist in many countries; they constitute an important barrier to economic development, especially that of rural areas. Although countries often have established procedures to register these relationships, typically, procedures involve outdated, costly and time-consuming workflows, and in many cases, require workflow resources that are simply unavailable.

Since around 2011 pilot projects to innovate land tenure documentation are being implemented in various countries in the global south in order to address the shortcomings of formal land registration. A longer-term question, underlying the present study, is how these innovations relate in the longer run to existing institutional arrangements of land governance in the respective context of implementation. Guided by this more general question, we discuss in this paper first the characteristics for 6 of these approaches.

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are emerging as a tool for alternative land tenure data acquisition. Even though UAS appear to represent a promising technology, it remains unclear to what extent they match the needs of communities and governments in the land sector. This paper responds to this question by undertaking a socio-technical study in Rwanda, aiming to determine the match between stakeholders' needs and the characteristics of the UAS data acquisition workflow and its final products as valuable spatial data for land administration and spatial planning.

Processes and transactions in Land Administration are outside the scope of the Land Administration Domain Model Edition I published in 2012. Reason is that processes were considered to be country specific. Generic processes would be too difficult to model. This view needs reconsideration – given developments as Fit-For-Purpose Land Administration, Apps and blockchain.

The paper describes the ongoing developments and standardisation in land administration. Standards are relevant in relation to build as well as maintain and develop a land administration.

Processes and transactions in Land Administration are outside the scope of the Land Administration Domain Model Edition I published in 2012. Reason is that processes were considered to be country specific. Generic processes would be too difficult to model. This view needs reconsideration – given developments as Fit-For-Purpose Land Administration, Apps and blockchain.

This paper presents the first and incomplete draft text for the revision of IS 19152:2012 ‘Geographic information — Land Administration Domain Model (LADM)’ within ISO TC211 in the form of a New Working Item Proposal (NWIP). This ‘two-page NWIP’ text aims to describe the scope of proposed project to revise, and also provides the purpose and justification behind this revision of LADM. The International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) also submitted to ISO the NWIP for the current version of LADM (IS 19152:2012).

Cameroon’s current land law appears to have two conflicting objectives: to attract investors through large-scale land concessions while simultaneously protecting biodiversity, defending local people’s rights and promoting rural development. But the legislation governing large-scale land-based investments is outdated and sometimes incoherent. The land allocation process is investor driven and does not appropriately balance economic, social or environmental considerations.