International Activities on „Land Management“ Issues

Thus, it is to observe a renaissance of land management issues and topics in the national and international scenes; the activities are caused through different impulses and focussed on different approaches:

• Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) with its „Land Tenure Office“ in Rome and its „Sub-regional Office“ in Budapest is dealing with land management and land consolidation activities since mid of the nineties; important congresses and workshops have been implemented and substantial publications as support for the upcoming administrative structures in Central and East Europe were edited.

• Since the end of the nineties the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe – Working Party on Land Administration (UNECE-WPLA) is permanently treating land management issues in its half-yearly workshops, beside the general “land administration” topics. And in May 2007 in Munich the UNECE-WPLA Workshop will be exclusively focussed on land management matters.

• The Federation International de Geomètre (FIG) with its national and international sub-organizations dealt last time with specific land management questions; an the actual Cadastre Congress in Ankara with land use and land management reports is also a confirmation of the observation that „land management“ is actually en vogue.

• In 2003 the Central-European Centre for Communication and Consultation in Land Issues (4 CLI) was launched in Budapest (the former CELK Centre), founded by WORLD BANK and Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture. Its main task is the support of the development in Central and East European Countries in land

administration issues, particularly in land management issues. A comprehensive database in kind of a scientific thesaurus was created with a broad collection of relevant information about land related issues, so called IKON (Interactive Knowledge Networking) with access through the LANDnet portal of 4 CLI.

Beside a lot of supporting activities in specific national questions of requesting countries, last December an important „Land Consolidation Conference“ was held in Budapest.

But also in West Europe Land Management questions are on the Agenda:

• Land management and land consolidation are expressively named in the EU Regulation for the Development of Rural Areas concerning period 2007 until 2013 as specific measures that can be funded by the EU.

• In context with a EU funded trans-national INTERREG III C project

„FARLAND“ (Future Approaches in Land Development) seven European Countries are comparing and analyzing their national approaches in rural development, specifically focussed on land management activities concerned.

• Since 1st of May 2006 there is an application at the COST Office of the European Science Foundation in Brussels for funding of a trans-national research project

„Rearrangement of Property Rights in Rural and Urban Areas“. More than 40 scientists from 25 European countries expressed their urgent interest to participate in this research project. The scientific goal is a survey, comparison and analysis of the existing land management approaches in Europe and to create an

„ontologically-based“ model of contemporary land readjustment tools, what is needed in land management for.

So far the actual relevance of Land Management in Europe.

But what do we talk about exactly by „Land Management“?

3. Definition

At present we have to state a very diffuse situation concerning “land management”

and sometimes a real Babylonian language confusion in terms of „land management“, particularly in terms of „land consolidation“ (Thomas 2006). Therefore I refer to the definition of the UNECE (UNECE 2005) concerning „land management“:

„Land Management is the process whereby the resources of land are put to good effect regardless of the fact that the land may be owned by the State, a legal entity or a private individual. It covers all activities concerned with the management of these physical resources including farming, mineral extraction, property and estate management, and the physical planning of towns and the countryside.

It embraces such matters as

- property conveyance, including decisions on mortgages and investments;

- property assessment and valuation;

- the development and management of utilities and services;

- the management of land resources such as forestry, agriculture, soils;

- formation and implementation of land use policies;

- environmental impact assessment and

- the monitoring of all activities on land that affect good land use“.

“Land readjustment” – as „land management“ strictly speaking – contains all activities which „are likely to bring current land use, land ownership issues and other land tenure (individual subjective property) rights in accordance with private and public requests on land use (manifested in planning goals) and/or to eliminate disturbing effects according to plan” (Seele 1992). Measures of land management in this sense stretch from unpretentious land use agreement by contract and free-hand acquisition on to legally enforced expropriation. In between these extremes, sovereign or compulsory land readjustment tools like land consolidation are located in the German tool box (Thomas 1995):

Land Management in this sense is of dynamic essence, and characteristic, and demands targeted and sophisticated activities and measures.

In contrary, “Land Administration” is of more static character:

“Land Administration refers to the processes of recording and disseminating information about the ownership, value and use of land and its associated resources. Such processes include the determination (sometimes known as the “adjudication” or “formalization”) of rights and other attributes of land that relate to its value and use, the survey and graphical description of these, their detailed documentation and the provision of relevant information in support of land markets” (UNECE 2005).

Figure 1: Land Readjustment in Germany

“Land Registry/Book” and the “Real Property Cadastre” fulfil these descripting and recording, documenting and legally confirming tasks , sometimes established as “Unified Real Property Cadastre” on a digital database and in one institutional hand.

Thus, we have to do in land issues with “twins“ being of different characters:

− Land Administration, the static component, has more conserving and disseminating tasks;

− Land Management, the dynamic component, has more changing and adjusting tasks.

But both have to cooperate and to collaborate closely.

Between Land Management and Land Administration there is no subordinating relationship what ever for; they mutually necessitate themselves.

They are “brothers” or ”sisters” without any preference of one, which have cooperatively functioning their optimal effects and the best outcome:

Figure 2: Relationship between Land Management and Land Administration