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Securing Land Rights through Flexible Mapping Approaches - an Analysis of the Legal
and Policy Implications in Ghana
Secure land right is critical in influencing agricultural investment decisions which by
extension could have implications for productivity and livelihoods. Tenure insecurity
however remains deep-seated and widespread in Ghana where most lands are primarily held
under customary ownership. Contemporary pressures on land from rising population,
globalization and market liberalization among others are however putting strain on customary
land tenure practices and institutions and this is further weakening their ability to provide the
needed level of tenure security. There have been considerable investments in land titling and
other Western inspired approaches to help improve security of tenure for all. However, these
have continuously failed to live up to the initial expectations, a situation which has prompted
the need for flexible and Community Based Strategies which are inspired by local narratives.
The search for flexible and innovative alternatives to titling is important. This is because, it
has been estimated that less than 30 percent of land rights in developing contexts are covered
by formal land titles (UN-Habitat, 2015). And there are concerns that, under the current
system of land titling and formal land documentation processes, it may take up several
centuries in order to achieve complete coverage (Lemmen et al, 2015; UN-Habitat, 2015).
This has resulted in the need for new approaches which combine simple technologies and a
new professional mindset that supports transparent, pro-poor and gender sensitive land
governance (Lemmen, et al, 2015). This could help to improve land tenure administration
which could in turn contribute to attaining food security, adequate housing and economic
empowerment.
In this regard, the concept of continuum of land rights has revolutionised recent debates on
tenure security. This concept recognizes the variety of rights and interests which fall in
between the formal and the informal ends of the continuum as summarized in the figure
below.
Fig 1: The Continuum of Land Rights
Source: UN-Habitat (2015)
This new turn has provided the policy space to consider how community based approaches
could contribute towards securing land rights. Examples of these flexible tools include Open
Tenure in SOLA from UN-FAO, Landmapp, MapMyRights Foundation, the Rights and
Resource Initiative, the Missing Maps Project, USAID’s MAST Project in Tanzania, the
Social Tenure Domain Model and MappingforRights among others. Specifically in Ghana,
there has been various non-conventional and flexible means of documenting land rights such
as the Community Based Land Survey Tool by Land Resource Management Centre 1,
ParcelCert by Medeem and LandSeal among others. These tools employ community
participation to ascertain ‘who owns what’. Once this has been achieved, these rights are
documented using simple but fit-for-purpose technologies. As a result, securing land rights
through community based or locally inspired strategies is increasingly being seen as a viable
alternative.
Securing land rights through such flexible approaches is grounded on the logic of economics
of precision. This means, in farming communities and rural areas where land values and
pressures on land are generally low, less precise but fit-for-purpose technologies should be
employed in documenting land rights. Such an approach makes it affordable and accessible to
enhance security of land rights. As land values rise, then high precision and accuracy surveys
could be used. This will then create the opportunity for an incremental shift towards high
precision surveys as land values rise. This is welcoming. However, the legal recognition and
acceptability of maps and plans which are generated from such flexible and often community
based strategies for documenting land rights and securing tenure remain uncertain.
Current laws require that land survey must comply with stated precision standards in order to
be recognised by state agencies, especially when such a document is to be presented to the
court as evidence. Such a document should have a ‘Regional Number’ which is issued by the
Survey and Mapping Division of the Lands Commission. According to the Survey and
Mapping Division, acceptable maps/plans should have ‘Controls’’ Survey Beacons’ and
‘Coordinates’ which links the surveyed land to the Regional Number. By this, all surveys can
be easily linked to the National Geo-Referencing System.
Section 19 of the Land Title Registration Law, 1986 (PNDCL 152) outlines the list of rights
and interests in land which are registrable. These include freeholds, leasehold or lesser rights
which are held under contractual or share cropping or other customary tenancy arrangement.
Formal survey systems, as supervised by the Survey and Mapping Division only tend to
document freehold and leases. Customary Freehold (Usufruct) and Lesser rights like share
cropping and customary tenancies, which happen to be the main pathway through which
people access land in rural areas, are currently not being documented by the Survey and
1
See http://pubs.iied.org/17214IIED.html
Mapping Division. This state of affairs could be detrimental to several social groups,
particularly migrant farmers whose land rights may be most vulnerable. Such developments
make the need for flexible alternatives more important. Despite this, there is uncertainty
about the legal validity of such approaches.
Currently, there is no definite policy position on the emergence of flexible approaches for
documenting land rights. However, existing laws effectively push towards the high precision
surveys in order to ‘get it down properly once and for all’2. By engaging key experts and
reviewing relevant existing laws and policy, this paper identifies how existing provisions and
requirements hinder the mainstreaming of flexible approaches in land administration. The
paper concludes by arguing that there is the need for a legal and policy reform in order to
effectively integrate flexible survey approaches in Ghana’s land administration system. This
is critical in ensuring tenure security or all.
2
Interview with a Licensed Surveyor in Kumasi, 10th October, 2015