Climate Change: Building Land Administration Resilience

2019 saw the “Climate Emergency” raised to the fore around the globe gaining huge public momentum and varying political attention. It’s difficult to write from a country that ignored a call from neighbouring Pacific leaders in August and then a month later at the UN summit rejected future commitments to a global UN Climate Fund. Nonetheless, we at LEI, are committed.

We are committed to providing our expertise where it matters and that is by helping governments to make their land and geospatial information serve their people and environment better. Integration of datasets can improve a jurisdictions’ risk and resilience to the effects of climate change, particularly those devasted by natural disasters, by ensuring the location of people and assets are known and up to date. This can allow for much more effective and efficient planning, response, recovery and rebuilding for disasters. 

In Kerala State, India, after floods affected 40% of the state, more than 450 lives were lost and $5.8bn in property damaged, the Government committed to a Rebuild Kerala Initiative with a Resilient Kerala Policy. As part of many actions, a key focus will be rebuilding and improving land and geospatial information records and integration. Both secure tenure and secured land records are vital during times of disaster, and particularly for poor and vulnerable people since they are most likely to be living in locations at higher risk of impact and upon return are most likely to face eviction or limited support to recover and rebuild. As often is the case, and not unlike in Kerala State, there are separate institutions holding different parts of cadastral and legal land ownership records, unconnected to planning, revenue or disaster risk management data. A resilient land administration system requires the ability for land and geospatial information to be integrated and overlapped, requires latest tenure arrangements in spatial and legal forms to be accessible, as well as the ability to know property and asset values for assessment and compensation.  

Investing in the land administration system of Kerala State is necessary to increase the resilience and resilience impact of the system, and therefore LEI are providing a rapid review of the functions of registration, service provision, land records, surveying, valuation, institutional arrangements and mandates. The review makes a diagnosis of office operational and land records management system status and completeness, currency and state of survey plans and maps, revenue generation as well as the industry roles and regulatory requirements surrounding the services. The consultancy will highlight potential risks of the land administration system and potential activities to be undertaken to improve the resilience, physical, operational and financing of the land administration system, and provide estimates of costings and associated timeframes for government and stakeholder review.  

Kerala State with a population of 34.8million at the tropical southern tip of India, has a 580km long coastline, and prior to the 2018 floods more witnessed more than 84,000 people being evacuated due to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The increasing prevalence of natural disasters due to the effects of climate change is being felt globally. Ongoing sea-level rise to immediate and rapid weather extremity events, places a baffling cost and risk to lives and economies. Preparedness is essential and that is why we are determined to assist governments in their preparedness strategies towards land and geospatial information that will reduce the loss of lives, improve the recovery and re-build process, and a stronger and resilient economy.