Land Tenure Center Newsletter
Number 82, Fall 2001, p. 6-7
Twelve high-ranking Russian land management officials came to the University of Wisconsin for training. Funded by the World Bank, the training is part of a program helping Russia develop real estate markets for the first time. The Center and the Business School organized the program, led by LTC Senior Scientist Peter Bloch and Professor Roderick Matthews, with the assistance of LTC Visitor Coordinator Christine Elholm. Other faculty and staff from the Business School and Law School also worked with the visitors. Very recently, it became legal to buy and sell certain types of land in Russia. The people chosen for this training opportunity are among those who will have the most impact implementing a successful land market in Russia.
Managed by the Center for the past five years, BASIS CRSP is synthesizing its global work on land, water, labor, and financial markets. Conferences were held in key regions to begin to forge policy. Kurt Brown, LTC Communications Director, attended conferences in El Salvador and Russia. Michael Roth, Director of BASIS Phase I, and Marsha Cannon, LTC Outreach Coordinator, attended a conference in South Africa. Reports on the conferences and synthesis activities can be found at http://www.ies.wisc.edu/ltc/basiscom.html.
Two development researchers visited the Center to research Ethiopian agricultural economics, development, and land management. Workneh Negatu, Associate Professor, and Yigremew Adal, Lecturer, both of the Institute for Development Research at Addis Ababa University, are part of BASIS CRSP. The two have worked on a series of surveys administered to over 400 households that monitor monetary, asset, and demography changes. They plan to use Ethiopian, regional, and international land market information acquired during their stay in writing a research paper.
The Department of Land Affairs, Republic of South Africa, invited LTC researchers Brenda Haskins and Michael Roth, along with Director Harvey Jacobs, to attend the National Land Tenure Conference: Finding Solutions, Securing Rights. Haskins and Jacobs oversaw and monitored 20 commissions at the conference, which was held in November in Durban. Roth presented a synthesis of key findings and challenges for rural development. All three served on a committee that synthesized the plenary sessions, commissions, presentations, and critiques by delegates. The Center helped design the conference, identified international participants, and prepared background materials for conference participants. (See related article.)
Charisse Griffith-Charles, from the Department of Surveying and Land Information, University of the West Indies, came to the Center to further her research on cadastral reform. Recently, Trinidad and Tobago upgraded its cadastre system in order to support agricultural growth, yet the overhaul sometimes was beset by bureaucratic difficulties and institutional inadequacies. Griffith-Charles hopes to find a more effective way of implementing cadastre reform.
Bill Kinsey, a prominent development researcher based in Zimbabwe, was at the Center to work on issues around land redistribution. The Center is collaborating with the Center for Applied Social Sciences, University of Zimbabwe, on a study that evaluates the efficiency and effectiveness of distributing land through non-state methods and using alternative forms of farming and resource management in order to maintain economic sustainability. A Senior Research Fellow associated with the Free University, Amsterdam, Kinsey regularly uses the Center’s library to research global conflict management approaches and make systematic comparisons between the design of land reform programs in relation to their outcomes.
The Center’s Susana Lastarria will spend December in Rome working with the Women and Development Service at FAO. Lastarria will help prepare policy guidelines on integrating gender in land and natural resource tenure. Her work will analyze the advantages and disadvantages of various land tenure policy mechanisms. She also will be developing a proposal to involve FAO in her project examining the impact of joint title on gender equity and economic development. This project promotes equal rights and conditions for access, control, and use of land and other natural resources.
The Center has been awarded a project to determine the extent to which USAID’s programs to improve access to land, land markets, and property rights have broadened access to land and related natural resources. The project also will assess how the programs have contributed to land tenure security in developing countries and countries in transition. The assessment will help USAID managers design programs that achieve economic growth and agricultural development, reduce poverty, protect the environment, and alleviate conflict. Coordinated by LTC researchers David Stanfield and Peter Bloch, the project will have global applications.
The Ph.D. in Development Studies Program, administered by the Center, has a new chairperson. Professor Marion Brown (Life Sciences Communication) became Chair on 1 July. One of the founders of the Development Studies Program in 1970, Brown’s expertise is in persuasive communication, science writing, technology transfer, media relations, and communication in economic and cultural change in developing countries. Professor J. Lin Compton (Forest Ecology and Management), who chaired the program since 1997, stepped down to devote full attention to his work on upland ecosystems in Yunnan, China and neighboring Southeast Asian countries.
Center researchers Malcolm Childress and Susana Lastarria will work on a feasibility study for a project in Suriname. Commissioned by the Government of Suriname and partially funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, the study will determine the activities, investments, and overall costs involved in a project that would assist Suriname in establishing policy on land administration and land use planning. The project would help form dynamic land markets, promote efficient use of resources, allow accessibility to land for all segments of society in a fair and transparent manner, and support the competitiveness and sustainability of the agricultural sector.
LTC researcher Michael Roth coordinated BASIS CRSP participation in the Consultative Meeting on Land Issues, cosponsored by the World Bank’s Land Policy and Administrative Technical Group and USAID. The Center’s David Stanfield also attended. Roth was one of the peer-reviewers in the Bank’s “Land Use Best Practices” email conference and coedited a final report issued by BASIS CRSP, which included peer-comments on the Bank’s draft report: "Land Policy and Administration: Lessons Learned and New Challenges for the Bank’s Development Agenda." See http://www.ies.wisc.edu/ltc/live/basglo0107b.pdf.
The Land Law and Tenure Security law student extern program (formerly the "Summer Law Extern Program") expanded to new sites, with new students involved and new people to serve. The Center’s Brenda Haskins directs this program, which is an activity of the Center for Minority Land and Community Security, Tuskegee University. Another project directed by Haskins, involves training "community land specialists." Recent training was held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the focus was on solving specific problems and providing legal solutions for minority landowners. The training also develops basic skills in estate planning, title searching, boundary disputes, heir property, land trusts, and integration into limited liability corporations. (For more information, see http://www.ies.wisc.edu/nap/nap_project7.html.)
Copyright © 2001 by Land Tenure Center and Board of Regents, University of Wisconsin. All rights reserved.
Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for noncommercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies.
Top of page
Return to Newsletter index
Return to publications page
Return to LTC's home page