Post Type: Blog

A Municipal Land Office in Valencia, Córdoba is helping families protect their property for future generations

Ana Espitia lost her mother two years ago. One day after the funeral, her brother insisted on selling the home that was still in her mother’s name. She was worried and unaware of how she could fight her brother to keep the house where she grew up and had taken care of her cancer-stricken mother in her final years.

“I was always by my mother’s side and I was going to fight for her home,” Espitia explains. “Then I heard that there was a land office in our municipality, and there, a lawyer explained the process to me.

In 1986, when Espitia was just 12, her mother bought the property in Valencia, a small town in northern Colombia, as a way to escape the violence that was increasing across rural areas. If she were forced to sell the home, she would have to find a place to rent in Valencia in an unfavorable real estate market.

Javier Guerra, the Municipal Land Office’s coordinator, explained to Espitia that in order to sell the property, her brother would need to gather all the signatures of her siblings. She was relieved and began studying how she could legally transfer the title into her name.

“Thanks to the Municipal Land Office, I got the type of advice that a lawyer would charge us a lot of money for, because property issues are always complicated here,” she says.

Espitia worked with her siblings to clarify the ownership of the land. In November 2021, the local land office put the cherry on top when it delivered the registered property title in Ana Espitia’s name. Valencia’s municipal government delivered a total of 45 land titles to residents like Ana Espitia, families who have waited over 30 years to finally prove they are bona fide owners of their properties. Espitia, who works as a cook in an elementary school, got time off from her job to attend the ceremony at the municipal park.

Ana Espitia has made improvements on her childhood home, located in Valencia, Córdoba in Northern Colombia.

The Municipal Land Office was first created in 2015 with USAID support and titled dozens of urban properties in the town’s center. The office, which is embedded in the Municipal Urban Planning Office, ramped up operations last year with additional USAID support. In 2021, the office delivered a total of 68 land titles in 2021.

“The Land Office is a big achievement and a great success for municipal administrators and the community. We are bringing land titling to families who have waited 60 years to be recognized as land owners. As a team we are now bringing these services to Valencia’s rural communities, explaining to them that land titling is a process that is totally free.”

The local land office also plays an important role as liaison for the National Land Agency (ANT), which is leading a massive land formalization campaign in Valencia. The office’s local knowledge is critical for the government’s land formalization teams to understand and manage social dynamics, reach communities, and improve efficiency in identifying and understanding land ownership. The methodology, which was jointly designed by USAID and the ANT, collects property data across the entire municipality, mediates land conflicts, and reduces redundancy among land-related entities. The methodology, which combines land titling with updating the municipal cadaster, helps the government to reduce costs by up to 60% as well as the time it takes to formalize a property and streamline that with the nation’s cadaster.

“It’s important to recognize these efforts of the municipality, since they are not physically visible, but they are of great benefit to the population and communities and together we are fighting to create a municipality of property owners,” Martínez says.

Over the last two years, the USAID-funded Land for Prosperity program (LFP) has supported the creation or re-launch of 26 Municipal Land Offices across Colombia. These offices have already titled more than 1,100 properties for families and over 400 public properties like health clinics and schools. USAID is strengthening the capacity of local leaders to maintain formal land ownership, manage land transactions, and enhance the culture of formalization. Using an approach that develops the capacity of public servants and reaches rural communities has the potential to improve the relationship between the public and government institutions while establishing conditions for leaders to mobilize critical funds for improving their municipalities.

USAID-supported municipal land offices have identified over 39,700 parcels and almost 1,000 public parcels that can be titled through their respective municipalities.

 

 

USAID-supported municipal land offices have identified over 39,700 parcels and almost 1,000 public parcels that can be titled through their respective municipalities.

Willing to Invest

With her land title, Ana Espitia has a new outlook on life and gets excited about making investments in her home and yard. She is already planning to pour a concrete floor and improve the bedrooms with doors.

“It’s much easier to make an investment when you know the title is in your hands,” she says. “I feel like I can better organize my life and live with less anxiety.”

In addition, the future of her children also takes on a new meaning. With the land title in her name, she knows she can pass the land down to her daughter and their families.

 

 

 

 

“Knowing my children can benefit from the land makes life more comfortable.” – Ana Espitia

Hamilton’s Life

Hamilton Rodríguez came to Valencia, Córdoba in the year 2000, after his father was killed in El Carmen de Bolívar, Bolívar, where they used to live. After the wave of violence, Hamilton settled in Valencia and in 2013 bought the parcel where he now lives with his wife and four of their eight children. The parcel includes the backyard where Hamilton and his wife grow corn and ñame, and the front porch where Hamilton has his mechanics shop and fixes motorcycles.

However, when Hamilton bought his parcel he did it through an unregistered contract, and he did not receive a formal title to his property. In 2019 Colombia’s Rural Agricultural Planning Unit estimated that 70% of Valencia’s citizens did not have a formal title to their property.

 

To settle one’s debts

In late 2019, Hamilton submitted the paperwork to formalize his parcel but he ran into a problem. “They told me I had to settle all the cadaster debts from my parcel and I had to pay over COP $1 million (around USD $300).” It was very difficult for Hamilton to pay this amount, especially since one of his sons, aged 22, needed surgery to remove a recently discovered tumor. The family had to cover a lot of medical expenses related to the hospital and medicine, and did not have the money to pay the cadaster debt.

Luckily, thanks to Valencia’s Municipal Land Office, the municipality cancelled all debts and allowed him to start the payments from scratch. Thanks to this decision, Hamilton continued with the titling process and was one of the 45 owners who received their property titles in November 2021. Now that they are the formal owners of their parcel, Hamilton and his wife plan to improve and expand their home and his shop.

 

 

Valencia, Cordoba, Colombia
© 2022 Land for Prosperity

Cross posted from Land for Prosperity Exposure site

This piece originally appeared in New Security Beat

By Claire Doyle

In recent years, the urgency of climate action has brought fresh attention to the critical minerals sector. Growing renewable energy investments are driving up demand for resources like lithium, cobalt, and copper, which form the mineral backbone of green technologies. But there are substantial concerns to navigate when it comes to sourcing green energy minerals.

“There’s a risk that in our modern-day mineral rush, without meaningful efforts to do better in the mining sector, there will be casualties,” warned Lauren Risi, Director of the Wilson Center Environmental Change and Security Program, at a recent Wilson Center event on critical minerals, co-hosted by USAID. “The mining industry has a long history and not necessarily a particularly good one,” said Sharon Burke, Founder and President of Ecospherics and Global Fellow at the Wilson Center.

Given the grim legacy of human rights and conflict risks associated with mining, the energy transition presents an opportunity—and a moral imperative—to pursue new approaches to extraction. “We’re already living in a climate stressed world, so we need to make sure that our solutions here in extracting materials for energy transition don’t do greater harm,” said Aimee Boulanger, Executive Director of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance.

What, then, does better look like for mining? The answer requires reflection and action in all sectors of society and levels of governance. “Better is what we all need to be striving for, whether we’re donors, governments, civil society, or the private sector,” noted Kimberly Thompson, Senior Advisor at USAID.

Yet views of “better” likely will vary among stakeholders “It depends on who you ask,” said Boulanger. “An Indigenous community pressed to the edge, trying to protect what little cultural heritage is left, or a community living downstream of a tailings dam is going to have a different definition of what is good compared to end brands who are giving us the products that we use each day and the mining companies who are striving to supply them.”

Strengthening Community Participation and Benefit-Sharing

Local stakeholders are crucial partners in shaping what “better” looks like, said Amayèle Dia, Senior Protection Program Office at the INGO Pact. From community members and organizations to local government structures, these stakeholders determine whether companies have the social license to operate. But they’re too often seen as a secondary stakeholder, she added, and their views, opinions, and concerns aren’t always taken into account. Exclusion from dialogue opens the door to both problematic mining concessions and human rights violations (like child labor) if communities are left with unmet needs.

To combat child labor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where roughly 45,000 children are involved in cobalt mining alone, Pact developed the Children Out of Mining Project. The initiative created an apprenticeship program to help adolescent miners find alternative employment as a response to observations made by a local development committee in the region’s copper-cobalt belt. Using a community-based model and local know-how, the program provides training in automotive mechanics, welding, carpentry, hairdressing, tailoring, and other trades. Since its inauguration close to 10 years ago, it has served several hundred young people in DRC.

Mitigating risks like child labor in the first place, however, requires stronger benefit sharing and up-front community participation in mining decisions. Communities must be involved “to ensure that critical minerals provide tangible [local] benefits” said Dia, citing economic opportunities, sustainable livelihoods, the development of infrastructure in education or health, and access to clean drinking water, among other examples.

Boulanger agreed that the best approach to mining involves working directly with communities. “Without community,” she observed, “we do not have security of supply.”

Recognizing “Hidden Suppliers” and Promoting International Standards

Dia said that another key group also merits greater attention. Artisanal and Small-scale Mining (ASM) operators number about 45 million across 80 countries and produce a sizable portion of global gold, tin, and cobalt supplies. “We cannot do the green transition without ASM operators,” Dia said. But these miners face a slew of challenges: They are often limited by a lack of market opportunities, a lack of expertise, and discriminatory gender norms.

In the larger field of industrial-scale mining, progress is reflected in a growing spotlight on standards and certifications. For instance, the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), which started 15 years ago with an initial focus on jewelry, is now a leading example of a third-party certifier with participating companies of all sizes located around the world.

“We have companies like Anglo American saying they will be audited at all their mine sites,” said Boulanger, “and smaller companies, [like] Carrizal in Mexico or Albemarle, who are still willing to do this, even though they’re starting companies.”

Certifications can help ensure that environmental, social, and governance concerns have been addressed by companies big and small. Public-facing audits should be emphasized in certification processes, noted Boulanger, because they enable communities to weigh in on the impacts of mining activities. “We need to be sure we ask communities whether the suppliers to our end brands are doing less harm,” she said. Certification programs also need to tackle mining risks in a holistic way, making sure not to inadvertently trade one risk for another.

IRMA is a crucial tool for developing higher mining standards and ensuring transparency, but legislation is ultimately needed to secure broad and lasting changes in the mining sector. “A voluntary initiative like IRMA is never going to replace the rule of law and government,” said Boulanger. “We need to improve these laws, and a global standard like IRMA can be used as a template and a support to governments as they increase and improve the strength of their laws and the robustness of their legal structure.”

Expanding Policy and Partnerships

In the U.S., the recent Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) represents a $370 billion investment in clean energy and tech, said Helaina Matza, Director of the Office of Energy Transformation at the State Department.

One key aim of the IRA is to onshore part of the energy supply chain, including critical minerals. Christopher Smith, Chief Government Affairs Officer at Ford, observed that “as we move to electrification and manufacture batteries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and power our economy, the United States government feels like it should have a greater direct role in overseeing and managing environmental issues that are associated with the extraction and the processing of said minerals. The idea is to move those minerals back to the US or to countries with which the US has a free trade agreement.”

Apart from the IRA, Matza said that the US government has been working on critical minerals issues through two State Department initiatives that seek to build cooperation across countries: The Energy Resource Governance Initiative (ERGI) and the Minerals Security Partnership. “There are important resources everywhere, and the only way to make a global energy transition is if we cooperate,” said Burke.

ERGI supports capacity development for ESG in mineral producing countries around the world, explained Matza. Since it began in 2018, ERGI has brought over $30 million to countries like Argentina, Uganda, and most recently the DRC. The State Department has also developed an ERGI toolkit, which features targeted learning modules for mining sector professionals on everything from production and stewardship to working with Indigenous communities.

Matza added that this past June, the State Department also created the Minerals Security Partnership with the participation of ten other governments to “start diversifying clean energy supply chains.” The Partnership is using existing ESG criteria like IRMA to have clear conversations with countries and companies about what it means to uphold robust standards, and it is already providing insights into the thinking and priorities of producing countries across the globe.

“Many of the countries we spoke with… want to make sure that they have a true understanding of their resource base,” said Matza, “so that as they tender out projects or start making modifications to their royalty or tax regimes, they understand that they’re doing so in a way that totally serves their community.” She also noted that these countries want to see their own leaders and experts involved in these projects and want to develop value added industries within the green energy economy.

As we look towards a renewable energy future, legislation at home must do “a lot more than just securing supply chains,” said Matza. It must secure supply chains “in a way that really supports the economic development and growth of all economies involved.”

Transparency and Better Technology as a Competitive Advantage

“End brand” companies like the leading automaker Ford also need to shore up resilient and reliable supplies in an ethical manner. “Electrification is going be the key to future transportation,” said Smith. “And right at the middle of that is the ability to access and mine and refine these minerals that you need for these batteries in a way that’s consistent with our larger values.”

Despite the complex supply chain of Ford’s products, Smith said Ford is keen on responsible sourcing. “There’s a great deal of visibility on a brand like Ford, and it’s an important part of our competitive advantage to do these things well.”

New types of extraction technologies, including a recently-developed method of extracting lithium that is less water-intensive, offer another path to “better” mining. Investments in innovation could lead to technologies that reduce the mining sector’s environmental impact and minimize its risks—if these new methods are pursued alongside community participation, international standards, corporate initiatives, and cooperation across governments.

Even with all of these avenues operating in tandem, however, “the mining sector is never going to be perfect,” Thompson admitted. “It’s a difficult industry. But we really can and we must do better. We must learn from our mistakes. We must draw lessons from the resource curses of the past. We must learn to empower and listen to local communities. We must learn to manage environmental and social risks and insulate the sector from corruption. In short, we need to learn to govern the sector better.”

Sources: Diálogo Chino, Energy Resource Governance Initiative Toolkit, Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, Pact, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of State. 

Photo Credit: Panel of speakers at the event, courtesy of the Environmental Change and Security Program/Wilson Center.

USAID and the Colombian Government are clearing up land and property conflicts in Cáceres in order to promote a formal land market and spur rural development

In 2011, Walter Tapia was lucky enough to find a small house near his father in the town of Buenos Aires, located in Cáceres, an isolated municipality in northern Colombia. He put money and sweat into the cinder block house by adding a cement floor, tiling the bathroom, and improving the kitchen’s countertops and backsplash. By 2017, his house felt like a home.

That same year, the owner of the land showed up knocking on his door to ask Walter why he was living in a home built on the owner’s land. Walter never knew the land had a previous owner and the only proof of ownership he had was a notarized compra-venta, denoting how much he paid for the house. Such receipts are typical for property transactions in rural Colombia. Now, Walter faces a difficult negotiation process and a legal battle that he’s not prepared to stage or pay for.

More than a decade before, the mayor of Cáceres had granted a group of empty lots to poor, rural families, but the government provided them with neither a registered land title nor any type of housing subsidies to assist with housing. Unable to build their homes, most of the families moved away in search of other opportunities. Later on, a subsequent mayor provided other families with housing subsidies, and they then unknowingly built on the already spoken for lots.

Two doors down lives Walter’s sister. She found out she faces the same issue as Walter, earlier this year. Around the corner there are more, hundreds of cases more. This neighborhood of Buenos Aires is a textbook example of the type of confusion surrounding property ownership in rural municipalities like Cáceres.

“I don’t want to spend any more money on fixing up my house, because I have no idea what is going to happen and I might never see it again,” a dejected Walter says.

 

 

A massive property sweep

In Cáceres, Colombia’s land administration agencies hope to clear up these types of land conflicts using a land formalization methodology developed by USAID and promoted by the government. The multipurpose cadaster campaign updates the municipality’s official plot map—known as the cadaster—delivers land titles to landowners and brings much needed clarity to property ownership. The campaign, overseen by the National Land Agency (ANT) and supported by USAID, is based on a similar land titling pilot successfully carried out in the municipality of Ovejas, Sucre between 2018 and 2019.

 

The innovative approach is based on a strategy that integrates social outreach, careful legal analysis, and critical coordination with government agencies to update land ownership information for Cáceres’ more than 11,000 parcels. The methodology has evolved since the Ovejas Pilot, improving through lessons learned, and is proving that a massive approach, which combines titling and cadaster, reduces redundancy. When land entities work together, the government can reduce costs by 60% as well as the time it takes to formalize a property and update the rural cadaster.

Helping to bring the massive titling endeavor is a team of more than 100 land formalization experts that coordinates with community leaders and triangulates information to the ANT and other agencies. The team is composed of land surveyors, legal experts, and social workers who are well into year two of operation.

In Cáceres, 8 out of 10 properties are informally owned. Properties are typically passed down from generation to generation, abandoned by families due to violence, or been granted by local government, but without land titles. But due to violence stemming from territorial disputes, the last time Colombia’s cadaster authority, IGAC, updated the municipality’s map of properties was in 2003.

To confront the lack of the public’s experience and knowledge related to a formal land market, the campaign employs a robust social strategy that relies on a group of 20 community leaders. The community leaders are essential in order to reach residents with important information about the process and key dates to keep on the calendar.

Ana Cristina Marchena is a community leader who lives down the road from Walter Tapia. She is working with the land formalization campaign to prepare residents with the information they need. Marchena and her colleagues received training in basic land tenure policy and how to title a property in Colombia. She prepares residents for exercises in social mapping, assists with locating residents who have been displaced, and helps communities flag major land conflicts in their neighborhoods or towns.

“The campaign’s workers cannot simply go into a rural community. They need somebody who knows the people, and my community recognizes me as a leader because I am always working with women and children. The community trusts me, and I can speak to them in their language,” says Marchena.

Perhaps Marchena’s most important role is as the nexus between the land formalization teams and armed groups who continue to play a role in the lives of so many rural villagers. As a trusted leader, Marchena can communicate with armed actors and prepare villages for the land formalization activities without unexpected episodes of violence resulting in turf wars or misunderstandings.

A far-reaching campaign

USAID is supporting 11 municipal-wide land titling campaigns across Colombia. Each campaign depends on a variety of factors and is expected to require an average of two years to complete implementation. By 2025, the government will have updated more than 115,000 parcels in the national cadaster with the possibility of delivering up to 40,000 land titles.

The updated rural land cadaster will include high-resolution maps defining property borders with more precision than ever before in the region’s history. A detailed cadaster reduces land conflicts and gives the local and regional governments critical information to plan land use strategies and investments that meet the needs of the population.

 

 

 

 

 

Team of land formalization experts in Colombia.

Beyond land tenure: integrated development

Cáceres has long been of strategic importance to USAID and the government, and this attention has led to a cluster of initiatives. Joint efforts in the territory go beyond the municipality-wide land formalization campaign. USAID’s comprehensive rural development strategy is also developing the capacity of rural producers, such as honey producers in Bajo Cauca, and engaging the private sector to invest in conflict-affected municipalities. By focusing on general issues in rural development, USAID land tenure programming addresses property-related challenges while opening financing routes to reach underfunded areas. This approach bridges the gap between a land title and rural development and helps the government achieve its goals to build self-reliance and promote a more stable, peaceful, and prosperous Colombia.

The new Jerusalem

For 800 families, Nuevo Jerusalem is still a dream. The new settlement, located 30 kilometers from Cáceres, Antioquia sees one or two new families arrive every day. Most of them have been displaced from their homes due to the violence and threats that make life impossible in this pocket of rural Colombia known as Bajo Cauca. With nowhere to go, the families attempt to integrate into shanty towns with scrap wood and plastic coverings. Every month, hundreds of people begin their journey to create a home for their families.

Nuevo Jerusalem paints an accurate picture of how towns are created in today’s Colombia: through invasiones or informal settlements created by internally displaced people (IDP). Colombia is home to a population of more than 6 million IDP—second only to Syria—and has the unfortunate distinction of being the world’s country with the highest number of IDPs and the least number of refugee camps.

With no water, sewage, or electricity, Nuevo Jerusalem will eventually require the municipality of Cáceres to face a problematic reality: find the resources to invest in infrastructure for these displaced families and rezone the land to allow for residential use.

“This is how cities expand in today’s Colombia. The problem is that the municipal government is underfunded and cannot meet the needs of these families,” explains Wilmer Molina, a social worker employed by the Cáceres Municipal Land Office. “On the other hand, the town’s population could mean more than 800 votes, so maybe somebody will help them someday.”

“Unfortunately that’s how Colombia works.”

Through his work, Molina is entwined with Cáceres land issues. He represents one part of a multi-pronged effort supported by USAID to clear up confusion around land ownership, update the municipality’s property cadaster, deliver land titles to residents, and promote a functioning land market. The Municipal Land Office (MLO) is an integral part of Colombia’s National Land Agency’s goal to ensure that the municipality’s 11,000 plus parcels are formalized and reflected in the nation’s rural cadaster. The MLO is located in downtown Cáceres and receives dozens of people each week looking for answers about their properties, laws, and procedures.

 

 

 

 

 

© 2022 Land for Prosperity

Cross posted from Land for Prosperity Exposure site

Three USAID programs in Colombia are working together to build the capacity local government to leverage USAID investments, mobilize resources, and improve basic services for rural populations

When people talk about Colombia’s Bajo Cauca region, located north of Medellin, many conjure chapters of the most dramatic violence in the history of the nation’s war. But that perception is changing in Valencia, a small municipality of 42,000 people in Bajo Cauca. In the wake of the 2016 Peace Accords, Valencia has benefited from development programs and become an example of how coordinated efforts made through USAID investments can transform Colombia’s rural territory.

In August, farmers living in the village of Santo Domingo saw how Valencia’s Municipal Land Office delivered land titles to 43 families who had been living on unformalized land for decades. They also witnessed how the local land office titled their health clinic, officially making it a municipal property. The property title is one of the first steps to investing in public goods, since public funds can be spent on health clinics that sit on legalized property. The USAID-funded Land for Prosperity (LFP) is supporting municipalities like Valencia with financial and technical assistance to run local land offices and improve land governance.

USAID Partnerships

“By supporting the Municipal Land Office and land formalization, USAID is also supporting rural development, a in this particular case, improving the local health clinic,” said Héctor Sepúlveda, LFP’s Regional Coordinator of Bajo Cauca Antioqueño, where Valencia is located.

Land for Prosperity is USAID’s largest investment in land tenure programming in the world, aimed at strengthening Colombia’s land administration systems and improving rural development and the conditions of rural households.

“USAID is our strategic partner, both in terms of human resources and the Municipal Land Office,” explains Eliécer Martínez, Valencia’s Secretary of Planning. “USAID provided us with the most modern land survey equipment that is used nationally and internationally.”

Since 2016, USAID has increased its focus on Colombia’s Bajo Cauca region, ensuring that its programs avoid repetition and build on each other’s work. In the case of a health clinic titled by the Municipal Land Office, USAID Responsive Governance Program then structures a project to manage funds for the clinic’s improvements in infrastructure and equipment. Then the USAID Partners for Transparency Program creates a civil society group to oversee the funds invested in adapting the health post.

Under this integrated strategy, USAID programs in Colombia can reach those underfunded municipalities historically affected by the armed conflict with complementary services. While Land for Prosperity increases the government’s capacity for land governance and promotes a culture of formal land ownership, the Responsive Governance program improves the management of public finances while the Partners for Transparency program leverages local capacity and commitment to promote a culture of transparency and accountability.

“We can’t lay a single brick if the property is not titled. Land formalization is the first step. Now that the municipality has the registered land title, we can start building and improving the health clinic.”
– Orlando Benítez, Santo Domingo’s health director

Filling Gaps

Land for Prosperity has facilitated the titling of 10 municipal properties in Valencia, including the Santo Domingo health clinic. In addition, the Municipal Land Office has titled 91 private urban parcels, giving poorer residents land titles for land they have owned for decades.

“In Santo Domingo, we are relieved to be getting a health clinic. We have a school but have been missing a health clinic for a long time,” Benítez says. “It is essential for the community, and thanks to USAID programs for moving this project forward.”

Once built, the health post will benefit more than 2,500 people from Santo Domingo and neighboring villages Cocuelo and Cocuelo Medio. It will have outpatient services, dentistry, and medical check-ups. To see a doctor, the inhabitants of Santo Domingo and neighboring villages must pay 50,000 pesos (USD $12) in travel costs to reach Valencia, which is a lot for a farmer whose income, in the best of cases, reaches USD $500 a month.

“In Valencia, USAID saw the opportunity to work on an identifiable need, which is the health center, then we managed to formalize the property,” says Andrea Olaya, Regional Manager of Land For Prosperity. “Partners for Transparency and its overseers are going to be very attentive to the entry of resources.

Concerted Efforts

USAID has prioritized ten regional integration initiatives including Nariño’s Pacific coast (Tumaco), Bajo Cauca, and Catatumbo (Norte de Santander). USAID is investing in property formalization, strengthening local government capacity, and agriculture, all with a differentiated gender approach that places an emphasis on the needs of rural women.

“USAID’s Regional Integration Initiative is crucial because it seeks the synergy among all the initiatives being implemented to produce a greater impact for the populations,” says Andrea Olaya, Regional Manager of Land for Prosperity.

USAID is supporting 11 municipal-wide land titling campaigns across Colombia. Each campaign depends on a variety of factors and is expected to require an average of two years to complete implementation. By 2025, the government will have updated more than 115,000 parcels in the national cadaster with the possibility of delivering up to 40,000 land titles.

 

 

 

 

A Health Clinic in Santander de Quilichao, Cauca, titled with support from USAID

In Bajo Cauca, LFP is supporting the municipal wide parcel sweep in Caceres, and Colombia’s National Land Agencies are supporting the parcel sweep in Valencia.

Under the Programs with a Territorial Approach strategy created by the government following the 2016 Peace Accords, places like Valencia have been favored with initiatives managed by the Territorial Renewal Agency (ART) and the municipality.

“In addition to the Land Office, we are highly grateful to USAID programs such as the one that provided us with the road inventory, making us the first and only municipality in Cordoba to have it,” said Valencia’s Secretary of Planning, Eliecer Martinez. “These projects are not physically seen but greatly benefit the people.

Cross posted from Land for Prosperity Exposure site

Volunteer community leaders are building trust and hope among rural citizens and spreading knowledge about land rights

Every morning Luz Estela Velandia wakes up to jog. A spry woman in her late sixties, she is vivacious as ever. She has hundreds of medals from a career in athletics, but these days jogging is as much about her health as it is about her community.

While roosters squawk, she runs by neighboring farms and thinks about her neighbors. She considers a variety of land conflicts common in her village that have split families and divided neighbors. In one family, two brothers are fighting over who gets what land after their father passed away. Over there, a family has built a shack and occupied an empty space next to the dirt road. On another plot of land, which was granted to them by the government in the 90s, some 17 families are living and farming under one single land title, and none can agree on anything.

La Luna is located in the municipality of Fuentedeoro where 6 out of 10 parcels are informally owned. Historically, Colombian land owners are responsible for titling and registering their properties with the state, but due to costs, complicated land laws, and the absence of government services in rural areas, informal land markets thrive.

 

 

 

 

Some 60% of the properties in Fuentedeoro lack a registered land title. USAID is supporting government to update the land cadaster and deliver land titles.

In La Luna the majority of people do not have a registered property title, and the conflicts seem to be endless. The subject of land tenure has become one of Velandia’s passions. Over the last year, she has learned more about property issues facing her neighbors than ever before. So, when she finds time between jogging, crafting, and leading La Luna’s Community Action Committee, she is teaching people about land rights and how property is titled and administered under Colombia’s arcane laws. Like hundreds of other rural municipalities in Colombia, Fuentedeoro has a decades-long history of violence, tragedy, and the struggle for land rights that has shaped its collective psyche. Under these conditions, reaching the community is not always simple.

“Fuentedeoro is the kind of place where people won’t open the door to strangers or give out personal information. People do not feel safe, and with the recent presidential elections, there is still a lot of uncertainty in the air.

Velandia’s job is to allay some of these fears and assure her neighbors that the government’s objective to increase land tenure security in rural areas is a legitimate, long-term commitment. For the last five years, pressure to title property and strengthen the formal land market has been percolating in the municipality thanks in part to USAID-funded programming to establish a Municipal Land Office and to examine the titling of properties of families living on many parcels under one land title.

In 2021, Velandia became one of dozens of community outreach volunteers raising awareness about land rights, the benefits of land titling, and the ongoing land formalization campaign in Fuentedeoro. As a volunteer, she received training in land formalization issues and social issues with supporting a culture of formal land ownership. The training, which is provided under the USAID funded Land for Prosperity program, includes a kit of teaching tools designed to simplify concepts.

“Before this, I knew nothing about land administration and Colombia’s land laws,” she admits.

Volunteers and land titling specialists at work in Fuentedeoro, Meta in 2022.

Massive Land Titling

Fuentedeoro is one of 11 initiatives funded by USAID and supported by Colombia’s land entities, including the National Land Agency. In total, the Fuentedeoro parcel sweep or barrido predial, as it is commonly referred to in town, aims to net over 2,000 rural property titles for landowners, some of whom have waited 40 years for a registered property title.

Just as important, the campaign will update the municipality’s rural cadaster for more than 6,000 parcels. The cadaster, which was last updated in 2006, is a master chart of all rural properties. Not only have properties changed owners since then, but land has been subdivided among families or sold to newcomers.

This methodology was created and refined by USAID and the Colombian government following the 2016 Peace Accords. Parcel sweeps streamline the collection and processing of property information in order to reduce costs and provide land agencies with integrated and reliable land data. Until recently, neither local nor national government agencies had complete control over this information.

With USAID funding and technical leadership, for the first time ever, Colombia’s three major land administration agencies are cooperating, sharing information, and supporting land titling campaigns to reach a goal of updating more than 100,000 parcels and delivering up to 40,000 land titles over the next five years.

Playing Games

Large land formalization campaigns rely heavily on social workers and outreach, and community liaisons like Luz Estela Velandia are one of the most effective ways to ensure participation. Trusted and motivated neighbors can fill the spaces where the government has been absent. Many in Fuentedeoro have long distrusted the government and believe land titling is just a ploy to take their land away. To overcome this information barrier, Velandia mobilizes her neighbors through neighborhood Whatsapp groups, where she can quickly reach 150 families living in her village.

In the groups, she advertises outreach meetings where she then uses the teaching kit, which includes flip charts, games, and puzzles to improve recognition of complicated land topics. The memory matching game, which requires participants to match land administration concepts, is a crowd favorite.

“The kit is didactic and participatory,” she explains. “It has to be this way, because the subject matter is complex, especially for people who may not have a very high level of education.” The teaching resources are also an attraction. In her first outreach event, 60 people came to learn about the land titling.

“One of the first things we learn together is the difference between a registered land title and a carta-venta,” she says. The carta-venta is a notarized receipt typical of a land transaction in rural Colombia. Over three months, she has reached over 100 people with the community crash course in land rights.

Velandia is not always successful. One group of families living on a collective land parcel say they do not want to participate in the massive land titling campaign, which is free of charge. Over the last five years, the families have invested thousands of dollars in a lawyer who claims he will individually title their properties. Though the government cannot force people to title their land, the campaign still updates property information in the rural cadaster.

Benefits of a formal land market

“I tell people that, yes, they will have to pay property taxes, but a land title can also bring them government subsidies, programs, and better services. I tell them a land title represents their rights. And I tell them that women have the same rights as men to appear on a property title as a man.”

These campaigns to title thousands of properties at once form part of the government strategy to move away from a demand-driven land administration policy to one in which the government assumes the cost of first-time formalization. By doing so, it will alleviate major time and cost burdens that prevent most low-income rural landholders from seeking a valid title. Once a property is registered, future title transfers will be much less time and cost intensive. The Fuentedeoro campaign started in October 2021 and will take place over a period of 12-18 months.

For now, community volunteers like Velandia are becoming the government’s most important allies to increase public participation.

 

 

 

 

The Land for Prosperity Activity is raising awareness about land formalization among citizens and partnering with academic and educational institutions to prepare the next generations of Colombians for a culture of formal land ownership.

“The key is personalizing all these relationships. We spend time together and have coffee and teatime and we can be honest about what is happening in our lives. Especially for the women, I give the program more credibility.”

Cross posted from Land for Prosperity Exposure site

With USAID support, Puerto Rico, Colombia is strengthening land governance and improving opportunities to invest in public spaces

A Tragic Day

As she walks, Elizabeth Ríos seems to carry images of the guerrilla and paramilitary violence that shook the municipality of Puerto Rico for much of the 1990s and 2000s.

“We had security problems,” says Ríos looking off into the distance, recalling times she doesn’t know how she survived. “One day there were two dead, another day, three. The town was divided until 1999, when the guerrillas took control.”

It was on July 10, 1999, when some 2,000 guerrillas of the FARC’s now defunct 42nd Front stormed and besieged the entrance to Puerto Rico and surrounded the police station, which at the time was staffed by about 30 policemen.

“Those policemen were like cannon fodder,” Ríos still recalls with fear, evoking the images of horror in her mind. “The guerrilla shot them with rifles and threw gas canisters at them.”

The bloodshed ended after a 40-hour siege of the police station leaving five policemen dead. The remaining tired 28 policemen gave up when they had no more ammunition or food and were kidnapped by the insurgents.

For Ríos, who has been a member of the Puerto Rico municipal council for 15 years and knows the history of the conflict in the municipality, the FARC takeover also destroyed the local branch of the Caja Agraria, a gas station, and left the town’s population without electricity. To never forget this difficult chapter, with the support of Ríos and the council, the battle site was converted into a memorial park in 2013.

Untitled Parcels

The Parque de la Vida y de la Paz, as the memorial park is officially known, has a monument commemorating the fallen policemen and those who were kidnapped during the three-day siege. But the parcel of land where the battalion was once located has never been titled in the name of the municipality. In fact, hardly any public properties in Puerto Rico are titled. Following the 2016 Peace Accords signed with the FARC, formalizing public properties became a priority. Clear land rights are necessary for rural development investments. With support from USAID, through the Land for Prosperity program, Puerto Rico titled the parcel where the park stands. The procedure is relatively simple, but no less important.

In 2022, USAID partnered with Puerto Rico leaders to create a Municipal Land Office. In its first six months, the local land office, which is embedded under the municipality’s Secretary of Planning has identified dozens of public parcels in the municipality that cannot receive national or regional funding without a registered land title.

“Legalizing property is fundamental. If not, we find ourselves in this bottleneck that, if they are not legalized, no investment can be made in them. Historically, no one cared about legalizing property, and the land administration process was poorly executed. This is an example of a mistake from the past that brings us consequences today.”-Diana Navarro, Mayor of Puerto Rico

In the Municipality’s Name

With USAID’s support, the Municipal Land Office has titled 10 public properties including the parcels of the Municipality Offices, the Fire Department, Villa García Park, El Morichal school, Villa Suárez Park and the memorial to the police battalion, Parque de la Vida.

“To have a local land office in the municipality, with the support of development partners, is very important,” said Mayor Navarro. “We still need to title 43 schools, four health centers, and another 51 community spaces.”

In addition to legalizing and titling the municipality’s public properties, the Municipal Land Office can title private properties in urban areas. The office’s staff includes land surveyors, lawyers, and social workers who raise awareness and promote a culture of formal land ownership. For the 12,000 inhabitants of Puerto Rico, the office represents a place to go with questions and learn about the land formalization processes. This year, Puerto Rico has already delivered the 32 land titles for urban parcels, all free of charge. The initial goal is to title 400 properties.

Juan Eduardo Ruiz, Puerto Rico’s Secretary of Planning, says it was vital to create a municipal land office in Puerto Rico because the office decentralizes land administration and improves coordination with Colombia’s national land agencies and property registry.

“Before this, the measurements of properties were never accepted by the IGAC’s cadastral offices because of differences, and a cadastral correction process had to be done,” says Secretary Ruiz. “Now we have the capacity to get it right.”

In the Meta Department, USAID is supporting a handful of land offices that have already titled hundreds of properties, including in neighboring Puerto Lleras and Fuentedeoro.

“I already knew about the Fuentedeoro Land Office,” Ruiz said. “I knew Puerto Rico would give strong results with an office here. It has been very well received in the municipality.”

Besides providing land tenure security for families who have lived in Puerto Rico for decades, among other benefits, landowners can access credit and government subsidies to improve their homes or for agricultural projects in rural areas since financial entities are more likely to lend money to people who have a registered property title.

“Now it is essential to legalize property in rural areas”, adds Mayor Navarro. With the resources that come from the payment of the property tax of the legalized properties, the Mayor’s Office will be able to raise money through property taxes to improve basic services in the municipality.

Puerto Rico has already delivered the 32 land titles for urban parcels and aims to title 400 properties.

This blog is cross-posted from the Land for Prosperity exposure site.