In 2014 the UN predicted that by 2050 66% of the global population would live in an urban environment and that much of this growth would take place in emerging economies (UN DESA 2014). With this considerable growth, comes the need for formal organisation systems of land registration. This is needed not only in the developed cities of the world, but more and more in developing countries who historically have struggled with creating an appropriate system to suit their needs, as opposed to one that the west deems worthy.
Discussion around housing as a human right has been developing since the early 1980s, with Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen forging a path that looks at housing as a tool for people to flourish and live within their own means (Sen 1981; Frediani 2007).
Sen’s rights based approach to development saw things like adequate housing, meaningful work and clean water and sanitation as basic human rights that should be provided to all. This led to the UN drafting the Declaration on the Right to Development, which demanded “equality of opportunity for all in their access to basic resources, education, health services, food, housing, employment and the fair distribution of income” (UN General Assembly 1986).
This essay will focus on the right to housing and how the issue of land registry and official tenure can be regulated to give everyone access to this entitlement. The discussion will look at housing from a rights based approach to development (RBD). Firstly why official records of land ownership are needed and who should facilitate them; then what role land rights play in social and economic development. This will then be criticised from a neo-liberal stance of government withdrawal. The discussion will be based around informal housing, unofficial land tenure. Following this, finance and lending, using land as collateral – examining the RBD in a neo-liberalist society and how we can allow all to participate in the capitalist market. Finally, why a ‘traditional’ (western) system not working in developing countries and how can a system be created to fit their needs.
Land ownership and tenure is a concept that dates back to the Egyptian era and stems from the tax system. It has been shown that in 3000 BC a Royal Registry of land ownership was developed to aid public taxation (Larsson 1991). This system eventually spread across the globe and from this a cadastre was created (“a systematically organized database of property data within a certain jurisdiction”) (Hanstad 1997). Land registry plays an important role in the legal system, but it also is a useful tool for development. In a modern age of overpopulation (particularly in urban spaces), informal and non-legal tenure is very common in developing countries. If this could be altered to regulate and record these occupancies then it is possible that the development of that area could be affected.
When looking at land ownership the difference between ‘land tenure security’ and ‘land title security’ must be established. The former is secure if the owner has little or no chance of losing physical possession of the land in question; whereas the latter is secure if the owner has documentary evidence of legal possession (Roth et al. 1989). Official record of ownership of land is often needed for a variety of reasons, however presented here are the most relevant for this discussion. Registration is needed if firstly, land title is insecure or uncertain or there is a high number of disputes over land taking place; secondly, at the early stages of a private land and property market (taking into account inheritance and general sale); and finally, where there is a need for a credit base for lending institutions to use as collateral (Hanstad 1997).
Now it has been established why this system is needed, who should provide it? According to the UN’s rights to development declaration referenced earlier, all have a basic right to housing and command “all states should undertake all necessary measures for the realization of the right to development and shall ensure equality of access to […] housing” (UN General Assembly 1986). The RBD implies that all within a community have a claim on national resources and these rights can be leveraged to gain access. This approach not only gives the people more power but also increases the accountability of governments by forcing them to at least attempt at providing for all the necessary needs. In addition to this the UN’s Habitat report in 2015 (United Nations Habitat 2015) states that all have rights to protection against forced eviction and security of tenure. This right to housing comes hand in hand with an ability to access official land tenure or register a purchase; so from an RBD this registry system is the tool for the human rights presented. As all the states in the UN signed this declaration they are essentially agreeing to provide their people with this access to an adequate land registry, which many countries around the world do provide; however it is the inequality of where this service is provided that causes the problems. Not having a system in place for those living in informal housing or slums is (according to Sen (1981) and the UN’s declaration) infringing on their human rights. Although technically it is usually the government who owns the land Lefebvre’s Right to the City (1967; Harvey 2008) sees that all urban dwellers have a right to appropriation as well as participation in the creation of the city and even more broadly a right to inhabit urban space. The governments of the UN have a power in this position to honour their 1986 declaration and give all equal opportunity to land.
RBD’s arguably utopian and even western-centric approach has been heavily criticised. The idea that it puts western ideals of human rights onto the rest of the world. This lack of consideration for cultural relativism is what limits the relevance of rights to those it is being imposed upon. Promotion of self determination and participation rather than forcing policies on developing countries (Mohan and Holland 2001). Developing this, Furedi (1997) looks at the history of development from the colonial period, citing the idea that the West holds the ‘moral imperative’ as the motivation for the ‘moral intrusions’ there were conducted. Criticising RBD in relation to housing and land rights, Evan’s (1997) work on imposition of human rights is relevant. He explores the idea that when rights are discussed with a legal or philosophical backdrop this can mask the underlying political and economic agenda. RBD to housing is again criticised by Sengupta (2000), who highlights that the recognition of political freedoms are relatively costless however when RBD promises economic rights such as housing the issue falls to who is going to pay.
Despite its downfalls RBD creates a logical and clear image of universal equality and using human rights to incite development it moves past the basics and into providing people with access to things that can improve quality of life.
Referring back to Sengupta (2000), the question is, who will pay for everyone to exercise their right to housing? Jones (2005) argues that RBD still holds an important place in the development discussion and although it is clear many countries around the world (developed and developing alike) are moving into an age of neoliberalism, RBD should not be discounted. Saying that, when it comes to housing Sengupta (2000) makes a pragmatic point that is hard to argue against. It is easy enough to say everyone should have access to housing as a right, and that is undisputed, but implementing this and facilitating this access is the hard part. The neo-liberal stance aims to reduce the role that the national and local government play within the community. It looks to the private, corporate sector to pick up the slack for the public. Privatisation of services such as health, education and transport are examples of neo-liberalism moving in.
De Soto speaks of a community in which nobody can identify who owns what and the disaster that ensues from this (De Soto 2000 p12; Törhönen 2004). This is how De Soto describes the property system in many developing countries around the world. Expanding on this Törhönen (2004) highlights that many poorer countries have a system in place; it is just not being implemented or enforced equally. Törhönen’s paper then starts to examine how land registration related to sustainable development; he believes that a good land register reflects the relationship between people and land, but argues that the system can play a much more significant role. The paper proposes using land registration to promote sustainable development.
When considering land rights it is important to examine one of the largest issues around this subject – informal settlements. Slums, shanty towns and favelas are all forms of informal dwellings, usually located in and around large cities and often house large portions of the population in urban areas of developing countries. Looking back to Sen’s work on housing, the rights based approach it lays more importance on economic, social and cultural rights (things that play a large role when using the human development index (HDI) as a measurement for a country’s development) whilst also taking into account issues of political and civil rights. This inclusion of (what some might see as) less basic issues pushes developing countries and emerging economies towards a better, more equal community. Sens work on entitlement and ownership questions how land and property was originally legitimised. This legitimisation dates back and can be hard to trace as all land came into ownership through informal and illegitimate acquisition throughout history (Sen 1981). With regards to the informal land acquisition that occurs when slums establish and grow, because cities in developed and developing countries are based around a private ownership market economy this community now needs the government to legitimise this acquisition as they would have done when land registry was introduced. Squatter rights
When trying to stimulate an economy in an asset based market the growth is going to be low and finite when only a small percentage of the population own their largest asset (a house or piece of land). This exclusion is what is stunting growth in developing countries. With many of the world’s cities being taken over by the spread of neoliberalism, the accepted approach to governance has gone from a socialist universal provision of services and care to a gradual withdrawal of government support (however, generally not a reduction of taxes). Following the Thatcher-Reagan era Peck and Ticknell (1994, 2002) recognise a “phase of intense and accelerated creative destruction of the regulatory framework of the preexisting welfare state” and following this “ a pattern of neoliberalism” that spread globally. Looking to Hernando de Soto he explains this lack of the official ownership registry (as opposed to the more informal social contract that Torohnen 2004 speaks of) is what is excluding large swathes of the population from accessing the capitalist market. If you can recognise that people have a stake in the capitalist market (e.g. piece of property) then that is when they can start to participate as the rest of the world does. Thus enabling them to contribute and benefit from the system that is in place.
In developing countries, short term economic gain is common practice (Taylor and Sarno 1997). Many of, particularly, the sub-Saharan African and Latin American countries operate on short term transactions; relying on a large volume of instant and speedy transactions rather than long term investments and economic development. When discussing development it needs to be established that for a struggling economy to prosper those who hold the largest assets need to share these. Land is a key example of this. If the richest of a country and the government could share and free up some land (not so much that it becomes a communist arrangement) then it would give the poorer people a stake in the capitalist, asset based economy so they can participate and contribute (de Soto 2000). By increasing the number of people contributing to (rather than relying on) the system, it pulls many of the poorest people out of poverty without the richest in the community having to cough up (Lavers 2012). Further to this, if the economy starts to thrive then those who are conducting business within that economy will have a bigger pond from which to fish, giving them greater potential. This system not only boosts the economy but also allows people to claim their human rights of equality of access to land. The concept presented starts with Keynesian solutions – the state providing access to land. This makes for a more equal playing field in the capitalist market; once this has been established, a system of traditional neoliberalism can take hold because all have (not a completely equal) access to a large asset which they can use as tool to participate.
One of South America’s largest cities, Rio de Janeiro has had to reevaluate it’s approach to development and consider the choice between a more socialist RBD and the neoliberal withdrawal of government. After 2003 Brazil was governed by the Lula da Silva administration (succeeded by Dilma administration which favours the same policies). This governance brought into practice what was described above: a combination of Keynesian ideas to initially stimulate the economy and then roll-out neoliberalism and traditional neoliberalism. This is done through expansion of consumer credit, income transfer and asset backed credit by enabling those in the poorer parts of the economy to gain access to assets (houses) that they would not have otherwise had. Governance in Brazil also backed local level, neoliberal projects to promote integration of it’s largest cities into the global economy (Ribeiro and Santos Junior 2017 p919). This concept much like the RBD sounds positive when laid out on paper, however, when it was put into practice the expected and needed “rupture […] to the pattern of urban development” (Ribeiro and Santos Junior 2017 p920) did not appear and it became clear that this new neoliberalisation still embodied the “inherited political structures” which were characterised by dependance (p920). The conclusion that Ribeiro and Santos Junior (2017) come to is that neoliberalism reinforces the historically conventional systems of urban accumulation and moves further away from Lefebvre’s ideas on “Right to the City” (Lefebvre 1967; Harvey 2012).
All of the proposed above would not be possible without a comprehensive land registry system. Although it seems like a minor bureaucracy, the presence of an official record of ownership is what allows people to use the land offered to them as the powerful tool that it has the potential to be. The implementation of a secure and suitable registry system is often one of the key things that is holding a developing community back. For many developing countries corruption is a prominent problem when it comes to matters of development, housing and land tenure. Being conscious of the “white saviour” effect it is important to include all areas of the community when exploring new systems that could be used (Bell 2013). Using participatory development methods can encourage locals to put forward the issues they are having with current systems and how they can be improved rather than (similar to the critique on RBD) charities, NGOs and businesses coming from the west telling developing communities what they need (cite participatory development).
Looking at new and exciting land registry systems that are emerging, Blockchain has been praised for its relevance and flexibility. Blockchain in the system that the world-famous cryptocurrency Bitcoin runs on. Essentially it is a decentralised record system; in the case of Bitcoin, when you deposit, for example, 5 bitcoin into your account the system records how much money you have and stores this information on millions of random computers across the world. When you come to spend your Bitcoin the system will instantly check these millions of computers that store your information and if more than half of the records say you have 5 bitcoin, then it is true. This is when the system’s security can be demonstrated: in order to change what the record says (or change how much money is in your account) you would need to hack just over half of millions of anonymous computers all across the world. This security is why it has been possible to build a digital currency. Blockchain, the decentralised system, is the part that can be used for land registry. If someone was to buy a house, the official record of them buying that house would be put on the blockchain, completely eradicating the need for government to be involved thus bypassing any possible corruption.
In December 2017 infamous cryptocurrency and technology tycoon Patrick Byrne (CEO and co-founder of Overstock) and Peruvian academic Hernando de Soto teamed up to create a system, eventually for profit, that uses Blockchain as a secure global land registry (Tett 2017). Byrne and de Soto have since put this system into place (in de Soto’s native Peru) and have seen outstanding results (FT Alphachat 2017; FT News 2017). The relatively low cost initiative allows for the poor to unlock the value of their land and creates empowerment through land ownership (Bitcoinmagazine.com 2018). In an interview with the FT podcast series FT News, Byrne was asked how much this would cost to take global and Byrne said that although this seemed like a large project due to its scale, the lack of physical infrastructure needed will allow the system to penetrate the global land registry sector with as little as US$40 million (FT News 2017). Using the success in Peru as an example it could be that the use of Blockchain is the new system that works with developing countries and emerging economies rather than against their current systems.
The criticism that could be argued against Blockchain are ones of possible exclusion. Although the system is designed by function to be inclusive, it might be hard to developing countries with low levels of technology to trust the new systems put in place and thus may not want to use it, this will disrupt the whole project as it must be universal within a country to fully demonstrate its potential. This, however could be solved through using a system that people already know and use such as M-Pesa. Using a trusted system could help to get people onboard initially. Despite this critique it still could be argued that Blockchain has the potential to be the next step towards a socially and economically inclusive neoliberal world.
To conclude, it seems that the RBD does play a part in modern development, however only for a short time. This is not a sustainable system that economic development (and thus social development) can rely on. The progression proposed of RBD and then a neoliberalist society is a clear route to encouraging development for land rights and other areas of progress in global south countries; blockchain is merely a facilitator of that progression.
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