Combining land-use planning and tenure security: a tenure responsive land-use planning approach for developing countries

Abstract

There is tenure insecurity around land ownerships and land rights in most developing countries. There are also many land-use planning projects being implemented in these countries. Often, land-use planning exists in these countries but is not formally linked with tenure security. This study argues that combining them by conducting land-use planning in a way that promotes tenure security presents a new approach. A central premise for the rationale of this intervention is that processes of land-use planning may inadvertently increase tenure security. By way of methodology, it evaluates land-use planning case studies from Africa, Asia and South America. It uses the three case study examples to build a case for making tenure security one of the major planned outcomes of a land-use planning process and provides a detailed framework for operationalising the concept. Its main contribution to the literature is that it introduces the concept of tenure responsive land-use planning.

Keywords:

• land tenure
• land tool
• land-use planning
• tenure security
• tenure responsive

Acknowledgements

We like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for making important inputs into this work. Supplementary support was provided by the GIZ and TUM.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study is based upon work supported by funding from the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) and UN-Habitat under the Agreement of Cooperation between the GLTN/UN-Habitat and Technical University of Munich (TUM).