News in 2019
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World Bank HQ, Washington D.C., USA
The World Bank remains a key FIG strategic partner underpinned by regular collaborative activities on World Bank (WB) platforms. This report highlights FIG Council’s collaborative efforts over the past nine months, first with Vice President Diane Dumashie attendance to an EGM on Public Private Partnerships, next a meeting by President Rudolf Staiger and Vice Presidents Diane Dumashie and Orhan Ercan with Senior WB representatives to continue the Memorandum of Understanding for the upcoming FIG term, third attendance at the WB Lands conference and the FIG masterclass, and finally the FIG Working week 2019, held in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Vice President Diane Dumashie was invited to the first round of global
consultations on PPP in land administration, organised by the WB and
held in partnership with the Dubai Land department.
The WB is keen to explore if PPP approaches that are successfully found
in several infrastructure sectors could beneficially be rolled out in
emerging economies. PPP contracts for land registration
e-governance systems have been implemented in some advanced economies,
such as Canada and Australia. It is timely to explore if
developing economies may also modernise their land registration systems
though PPP and financing from the private sector.
Accordingly Land Equity International have been commissioned to lead a consortium to assess existing experiences and draw lessons and develop an analytical and operational framework that could guide countries to think through the potential opportunities, benefits and risks of such an approach.
Several consultations have been convened around the world, with the objective to overview the framework, identify the benefits as well as risks of a PPP solution and ultimately understand the public sector and private sector capacity needs to develop PPP solutions that are pro-poor and deliver solutions to all citizens.
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 Wael Zakout framing the consultations to EGM Participants |
The deliberations began with opening remarks from the host’s, the Dubai Land Department, the opening address was from Anna Wellenstein (World Bank), and thereafter framing the consultations we heard from Wael Zakout and Aanchal Anand, (World Bank), with lively discussion facilitated by Tony Burns, (Land Equity international) and the consortium.
Diane Dumashie, drawing on her background experience in PPP’s (as government client representative on service and property PPP’s) concludes that that PPP for land administration initiative has the opportunity to be truly innovative; but this means having to design something that is different to the ‘standard’ PPP process, which of course means the financers will also have to adapt to new business models and indeed may not be the traditional PPP funders!
Several consultations have been convened; the latest at the time of writing was March 2019 at the World bank lands conference. Further details are at www.landPPP.org
World Bank iconic globe in the Head Quarter Lobby,
The World Bank annual land conference was held in Washington DC on 25
-29th March 2019. Attending were President Rudolf Staiger, Vice
Presidents Diane Dumashie and Orhan Ercan who took the opportunity to
strengthen the partnership between FIG and the WB, by holding a meeting
prior to the start of the conference.
The meeting organised by Mika-Petteri Torhonen, lead land administration
specialist involved key people from the World Bank Global Land Policy
and Geospatial Unit, including Wael Zakout, Sr. Technical Advisor,
Global Lead, Victoria Stanley, Senior Land Administration Specialist,
Kathrine M. Kelm, senior land administration specialist.
The purpose of the meeting was to review and renew the Memorandum of
Understanding, in particular seeking to identify specific outputs that
could be delivered over the current term. Of particular interests
for future cooperation are issues around: 2030 agenda, meeting the
SDG’s, building sustainable land administration systems via technology
and increasing capacity, the imperative to speed up land administration
and remain cost effective (FFP), increasing effectiveness of Government/
donor financing, (via PPP), Land rights of Women, indigenous and
displaced peoples, WB initiative on geospatial and 3 D Cadastre on
boundaries. The MoU will now be revised accordingly.
The opening of the 20th Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, focused on the theme: Catalyzing Innovation. Around this theme the conference presents the latest research and innovations in policies and good practice on land governance around the world. This conference has become one of the largest international events on land governance, attracting over 1,500 participants from governments, academics, civil society, and the private sector. The week is a full and packed agenda, with numerous pre and Post conference activities, poster sessions, Plenary presentations, parallel session, all as indicated in the schematic below,
The FIG family is very well represented, with Vice President Orhan Ercan delivering a paper, Vice President Diane Dumashie organising and facilitating a masterclass (see below), and above all, President Rudolf Staiger, as part of a panel of ten, providing his flash-thoughts in the closing ceremony. Many other familiar faces are also at this lands conference and contributing to building the World Bank collaboration, including FIG Commission chairs, Daniel Paez (Comm 7) and Angela Etuonovbe (former Comm 4), Steven Nystrom (former Comm 9) amongst many others.
 View of World Bank Atrium |
 Angela & Eugene Etuonovbe with Janet Edem and other Africa Union Representatives |
 President Rudolf Staiger at the closing |
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As always our thanks gores to the two lead people Klaus Deininger is a Lead Economist in in the Agriculture and Rural Development Team of the World Bank's Development Research Group and Thea Hilhorst, Senior Land Governance Specialist in the Development Research Group, both pictured below
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All the papers may be seen on the WB website, at https://www.conftool.com/landandpoverty2019/sessions.php
Importantly an additional platform organised by Vice President Diane Dumashie in partnership with RICS (James Kavanagh), was the FIG Masterclass: The SDGs and the Role of the Land Professional as a Global Agent for Social & Economic Change.
We are familiar with land issues being firmly embedded within the Sustainable Development Goals and the UN–Habitat III New Urban Agenda, with this in mind, Institutional innovation and participation by the land professions and private sector is important. This masterclass, dubbed as a learning exchange was facilitated by Diane Dumashie, and provided an interactive dialogue aiming to demonstrate, deliberate and articulate how private sector land professionals can actively interact with the SDG framework. The presentation will inform the FIG Task Force on SDGs (led by Paula Dijkstra) to be launched at the FIG 2019 WW in Hanoi.
Statements and presentations were provided by:
To round off the last nine months, Mika-Petteri Torhonen and Kathrine Kelm participated in the FIG 2019 Working Week. Mika provided a Key note in the opening, and on subsequent days, collaboratively special sessions were organised by WB and FIG to discuss:
All the working week papers can be seen at
http://www.fig.net/fig2019/technical_program.htm
Finally, FIG members look forward to continuing our exciting, engagement
and effective partnership with the World Bank team, ensuring we
collaborate throughout this term and beyond.
Diane Dumashie
FIG Vice President
June 2019
