Paul Munro-Faure
ABSTRACT
Commission 7 identified three areas for Working Group activity at the Melbourne Congress in 1994. Working Group 3 was assigned the task of looking at Land Management Trends into the 21st Century.
The paper looks at the particular tasks and areas of activity identified by the Working Group and at the outcomes. It goes on to look at the process of identification of the Commission’s new Working Plan for 1998-2002.
RESUME
Au Congres de Melbourne en 1994 la Commission No 7 a identifie trois domaines pour l’activite des groupes de travaille. La groupe de travaille no 3 etait nomme de rechercher les tendances de la gestion du territoire qui nous menent au 21ieme siecle.
L’article examine les taches particulieres et les domaines de l’activite que le groupe de travaille avait identifies et aussi les consequences. L’article passe a examiner le processus d’identifier le plan de travaille pour les annees 1998 a 2002.
ZUSAMMENFASSUNG
Kommission 7 hat 1994 auf dem Melbourner Kongress drei Bereiche fur die Aktivitaten der Arbeitsgruppe festgestellt. Man hat der Arbeitsgruppe 3 die Aufgabe zugeteilt, die Landmanagement Trends bis ins 21. Jahrhundert zu erforschen.
Besonders beschaftigt sich dieses Dokument mit den Aufgaben und Aktivitaten, die von der Arbeitsgruppe herausgestellt worden sind, sowie auch mit den Ergebnissen. Ausserdem wird das Erkennungsverfahren des neuen Arbeitsplans fur 1998-2002 der Kommission bearbeitet.
COMMISSION 7, 1994-98
Commission 7 settled on its modus operandi for 1994-98 at the Melbourne Congress in 1994. Prior to Melbourne the Commission’s work programme was the result of an ad hoc proposal of resolutions for acceptance by the General Assembly. These typically devolved to the person who had proposed the resolution to form a Working Group; effectively there was a proliferation of Working Groups with little to bind them together as a Commission 7 "product". Although some generated considerable amounts of material, others produced relatively little.
A more planned approach was favoured at Melbourne in order to generate better results, both in terms of relevance to member associations, and of provision of opportunities for individual delegates within the Commission to participate actively in the work of the Commission.
Three Working Groups, with working briefs spanning the Commission’s interests in both the Cadastre and Land Management were established:
| Working Group | Chairperson | Topic |
| 1 | Jurg Kaufmann (Switzerland) |
Cadastre 2014 |
| 2 | Tommy Osterberg (Sweden) |
Cadastral Systems in Developing Countries |
| 3 | Paul Munro-Faure (United Kingdom) |
Land Management Trends |
This structure did not preclude other tasks being undertaken. The FIG Statement on the Cadastre, which was published following the Berlin Permanent Committee meeting in 1995, was the result of the work of an ad hoc working group. Its success may be measured by the fact that this publication has been widely translated and is now available to many member associations in their own languages.
The three Working Groups fulfil the following requirements:
TASKS AND AREAS OF ACTIVITY IDENTIFIED BY WORKING GROUP 3
The members of the Working Group identified three key areas for its work at the 1994 Annual Meeting in Canada:
Publication
It was decided that it would be beneficial to look at the possibility of preparing a publication or publications that would reach outside the surveying community to increase awareness of the key role of surveyors in land management. The theme was "Land and land management: the outlook for the 21st century", with a strong and topical emphasis on the environment and sustainability.
The Working Group considered, in order of preference; published book, special edition of relevant Journal, and FIG congress proceedings. Possible publishers were investigated and recommendations prepared for the Commission’s annual meeting in Hungary in 1996.
A brief was prepared for the text as a whole and for each individual chapter, with authors for individual chapters identified largely from within the Commission’s own delegates. These briefs were circulated to authors for further development and as the basis for discussion. By the end of the Commission’s 1996 meeting in Hungary, the basic format for the publication was agreed and a publisher was secured.
The proposed text incorporated sections on:
An ambitious timetable was proposed in Hungary for preparation of the publication. Although there was some slippage, the detailed chapter outlines were collated for the Commission’s 1997 Annual Meeting in Penang for final agreement and subsequent formal presentation to the publisher. Unfortunately, immediately before the Penang meeting the Working Group was informed that the publisher was no longer interested in publishing in this line. In order that some of the work was used it was agreed that some of the proposed chapters would form a suitable basis for inclusion in the Commission’s Brighton programme. It remains a possibility that the idea of publication will be pursued during the period 1998-2002.
Conference
The Working Group prepared a one day conference on Land Management in the Process of Transition, held during the Commission's annual meeting in 1996 in Hungary. The conference focused on Hungary and reviewed the experience of member countries elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs) through papers prepared and presented by delegates to the Commission.
The theme of the conference reflected the fundamental importance of the changes underlying the process of transition for land and its management. The move from a centrally planned economy to a market economy requires vital changes in the institutions of land and property. It was therefore a natural topic to look at in Hungary in the context of the CEECs.
The first session presented a set of general perspectives on land management, providing a framework for the sessions that followed. The first paper discussed the European dimension and land management, focusing on the role of land consolidation in rural areas ("land consolidation") and in the context of urbanisation ("land readjustment"). It consciously did not address the UK approach to land management where the surveyor "... who really manages the land and acts as a steward or an estate agent ..." has a far wider involvement.
Land consolidation typically follows four steps:
The paper emphasised that there has been a considerable reduction in activities of this kind in recent years, although, in the context of the Netherlands, its use for environmental reasons remains of some significance.
Land readjustment uses special legislation or voluntary procedures in urbanisation to achieve:
The main CEECs land management process at present is land reform; including both restitution and privatisation. The paper looked at the possibility of using consolidation in the restitution procedure to improve the efficiency of the land use structure, and suggested the following advantages:
The second paper looked at frameworks for land management, characterising the changes that have taken place in the transitional economies and identifying the key areas for adjustment. Many of the these fundamental economy-building functions relate to the ownership and management of land and buildings; areas where surveyors in the broad FIG definition have a strong role to play.
The paper identified the requirements for the successful privatisation of land and property and the creation of a market in these assets as including:
It noted the importance of a reasonable degree of consistency generating confidence in national policies in this area and concluded by outlining the professional skills requirements; how they are developing to meet these challenges, and how professional associations in many transitional economies are developing standards of practice and codes of conduct.
The concluding paper in the session looked at the European dimension in the context of the land management related initiatives of the European Union, to which the CEECs are generally keen to accede.
The EU’s involvement in land management falls into three main areas; free trade, agricultural policy, and protection of the environment; with the last being of greatest significance during recent years. The EU’s directives on the environment cover water, waste, air, harmful substances, radioactivity, wildlife and countryside, noise, and environmental impact assessment. Specific review of the Nitrates Directive (dealing with water pollution) and the Habitats Directive (conservation of habitats and protection of species) and of their enforcement provided an insight into the scope of these legal instruments, and of how member countries seek to implement them within their own legislative frameworks.
The paper looked at the need for CEECs to adapt existing practices in the process of accession, and cited estimates of Ecu 300bn over the next 15 years to raise the quality of the environment in the potentially acceding countries. The EU’s Phare programme has specifically targeted Ecu 400mn in this environmental area since 1989 to the 11 partner countries, but the paper concluded that the difficulties should not be underestimated, particularly with regard to legislative harmonisation and enforcement.
Three papers were presented looking at different aspects of the host country’s experience in land management. These provided a detailed insight into the historical background to Hungary’s current restitution programme. In the agricultural sector, the programme itself, and the controlling legislation, have resulted in the creation of 2 million new agricultural land parcels on 5 million hectares of agricultural land. The cultivation of this land is as a result largely uneconomic, leading to calls for new land consolidation and land development policies.
Other land and buildings outside the agricultural sector have also been progressively privatised since the 1980’s. Mass privatisation of residential property and the property of state owned enterprises started in 1990, with a succession of measures designed to accelerate privatisation and reduce the state’s role in the economy.
The private sector’s perspective on land management challenges on Hungary’s former co-operatively owned agricultural land identified many problems in the development of the land market. The paper specifically observed that introducing land consolidation procedures costing billions "... will mainly be a waste of money ...", and that using the money to promote the development of a land market would be money far better spent. At present, for various reasons, much agricultural land is farmed on lease arrangements; lack of requirements to record such transactions make it difficult to be more specific than this.
Priorities in relation to land management outside restitution and privatisation have also included:
The particular land management challenges faced by the public sector were considered in detail, for both Treasury property and State-owned entrepreneurial property; the state remains as the owner of substantial property assets. The state is aware of the importance of effective management of the property resources that it continues to own, both in terms of generating revenue from the assets, and of preparing them for privatisation.
Many difficulties in implementing these laudable aims were identified ranging from the length of time taken for real property disputes to go through the courts (an average of two years), to the lack of Detailed Settlement Plans (town plans).
The key tasks to develop an effective land management framework in Hungary in future are to:
The experiences of Slovenia, Slovakia, Latvia, the Czech Republic and Poland provided further breadth to the debate in the third session.
The emphasis ranged from the developing legal frameworks and land management challenges in the public and private sectors, to looking at education and profession-building for land managers.
The papers indicated an important series of common threads, many of which were reflected in the experience of Hungary’s transition:
The conference proceedings were assembled and edited for publication by the UK delegate to the Commission, Mark Griffiths. The FIG Bureau provided financial assistance for the publication of the proceedings and these are available from the chairman of the Commission, Ian Williamson.
Education
The Working Group was also keen to support the excellent initiative of Commission 2 and the Commonwealth Association of Surveying and Land Economy’s (CASLE) in compiling a list of approved surveying faculties. Relatively few land management courses are included in the listing outside the Commonwealth. This reflects the traditionally predominantly land surveying interests of several FIG member associations, and yet land management, as a part of the defined surveying function, is very important. The development of such a network will form a very valuable basis for reciprocal contacts, particularly in the transitional economies where faculties of land management and related subject areas are making great efforts for their teaching and resources to embrace market economy experience. It is essential, for this to be successful, that there should be networking which facilitates the exchange of experience and ideas.
THE FUTURE: 1998 AND BEYOND
Commission 7’s Working Group on Land Management, 1994-98, undertook an ambitious programme to broaden the Commission’s awareness of, and involvement in land management, and to look at some of the key issues that are likely to concern surveyors in the future.
The following proposals were adopted by the Commission at its Annual Meeting in Penang in 1997:
The three Working Groups and their associated Task Forces proposed for the period 1998-2002 are:
The Commission will continue to sponsor and support wherever possible initiatives and conferences in its area of specialisation, and to encourage greater recognition in the community of the importance of land management and the cadastre. In this context it has already agreed to support a conference on the cadastre in Olsztyn, Poland in the latter part of 1998, and on land rights (with extensive UN support) in Bathurst, Australia, after the Commission’s New Zealand annual meeting in October 1999.
The Commission will endeavour to increase the contribution it makes to the FIG member associations by encouraging delegates to disseminate widely the reports and material from the Commission meetings to their colleagues following Commission meetings.
Paul Munro-Faure
Vice chairperson, Commission 7 FIG