Post Type: Blog

How Tumaco is overcoming legal and cultural barriers to formalize properties

Tumaco’s Municipal Land Office (MLO) is celebrating five years of operation and Nidia Díaz, who works as a local land administrator, has been there since the beginning. She remembers that in the beginning, the MLO was not as successful as they had hoped.

“The office was far from the people and had no advertising”, she says. People did not know about the land office or understand what services it provided. So in 2020, when the office was relocated to be closer to its users, the story changed.

 

 

 

 

Each day, the Municipal Land Offices receives dozens of visitors searching for information on how to formalize ownership of their properties.

Municipal Land Offices are part of a USAID strategy to develop the capacity of municipal governments in land administration and promote a culture of formal land markets. Local land offices provide citizens with information and work directly with Colombia’s land entities like the National Land Agency to formalize urban parcels and public property. Since 2020, the Land for Prosperity Activity, financed by USAID, has launched or relaunched 20 of these offices around the country.

In October 2020, USAID partnered with Tumaco’s municipal leaders to relaunch the MLO in the city’s new Integrated Service Center, located close to downtown. Now the MLO sits next to other important services for citizens and is visible to hundreds of people every day.

Since its relaunch, the Tumaco MLO has delivered 142 property titles to families living in urban neighborhoods. In addition, the office has provided training related to land formalization and administration for over 1,850 citizens. The MLO has also formalized 10 public entities including schools and health centers.

“Now we are better organized, we divide responsibilities and are more effective. We provide good user support, and the processes are more efficient, mostly because we have a vision and compass,” says Nidia Díaz.

Through the Land for Prosperity Activity, the MLO hired more staff and trained the entire team so they can improve services, outreach, and guide citizens through the process of titling their properties. Today, Tumaco’s MLO has 10 staff members, including land surveyors, cadastral engineers, social workers, and lawyers.

“Thanks to USAID’s support, I have seen the MLO grow. They have trained us with technical skills so we can provide quality services, both virtually and in-person.”

Cultural Barriers

In Tumaco, the Municipal Land Office also faces cultural barriers. Due to a history of violence linked to drug trafficking, the community has reservations when it comes to giving out their information, even when it is to municipal leaders. To combat this, the office holds workshops to raise awareness about formal land ownership.

“During these workshops, we can show people the importance of titling their parcels. There are a lot of people who have heard rumors and think that if they title their land, the government will take away their houses or their subsidies, and we tell them that is not true,” says Hugo Lopez, the office manager.

Since the relaunch of the MLO in Tumaco, 46 culture of formality workshops have been held, in which more than 1.640 people participated.

 

 

 

 

Employees from Tumaco’s Land Office follow up with landowners during the process of titling urban properties.

A Dream Come True

The MLO also leads outreach sessions called MLO in Your Neighborhood, where staff spend a whole day in one neighborhood answering questions, dispelling doubts, and collecting documents from the local residents who want to title their parcels. Once documents that prove they occupy their residence are submitted, MLO staff help residents fill out the forms and look for their cadastral information so they can immediately start the titling process.

Gloria Criollo, 53, is a single mother of three who works for a government program supporting pregnant women, nursing mothers, and children under the age of two. One of her neighbors told her about the land titling sessions in her neighborhood, Union Victoria.

In September 2021, a total of 45 families, some of whom have lived in the neighborhood for decades, received their land titles, at a municipal event led by Tumaco’s mayor. Most of the people interested in titling their properties are women heads of households like Gloria. Thanks to the work of the MLO disseminating information and providing training, they now understand the importance of being owners, so they have something their children can inherit.

“The USAID Land for Prosperity Activity has been very important for me and my family. Now I feel like I have have a house of my own that my children can inherit.” -Gloria Criollo, landowner in Tumaco.

 

 

 

 

Tumaco’s mayor, María Emilson Angulo, delivers property titles to residents of Tumaco in 2021.

“It is a joy to have this title. They told us that with it we can get bank loans. My dream is to finish building the front garden and the backyard and finish some work inside because we have had a lot of rain and we have water leaks.” Gloria Criollo

USAID and the Government of Colombia plan to begin implementation of a massive parcel sweep in Tumaco, which will formalize the entire rural area of the district. The MLO is supporting this process and provides the the local link between the municipal administration, USAID specialists, and Colombia’s National Land Agency. The MLO has already supported dissemination and social mapping sessions, in preparation for the massive formalization campaign.

“Tumaco won the lottery with the parcel sweep. For many years this region has suffered because of the armed conflict and national institutions have abandoned farmer families. But with the parcel sweep, they will be able to have their titles, improve their quality of life, and have credibility. Here, the true beneficiaries will be the farmers and the families from Tumaco.”
-Hugo Lopez, coordinator of the Municipal Land Office, Tumaco.

Footnotes
Photos by LFP/USAID
Tumaco, San Andres de Tumaco, Narino, Colombia
© 2022 Land for Prosperity

Cross posted from Land for Prosperity Exposure site

Gender equality initiatives are giving women in rural Tumaco an opportunity in Colombia’s cacao value chain and the means to transform their communities

“You can’t go if lunch is not ready.”
“Where are you going? Your place is at home with the kids.”

These are some of the things that women in a rural village of Tumaco, Nariño, hear their husbands saying when they want to go out with friends to socialize.

Women in Tumaco, apart from being victims of the armed conflict, have also been victims of several types of gender violence. Stereotypes around the obedient roles that they must play at home, inequality in the access to land, discrimination in the workplace, and exclusion from the decision-making processes are common.

This constant scenario is what motivated five brave Afro-Colombian women to come together in the park of San Luis Robles, a village located in rural Tumaco, to discuss their role in the development and growth of their territory. That day, in 2018, under a cloudy sky, these women recognized the need for women’s empowerment, mutual support, and the vindication of their rights in order to improve their communities.

 

 

 

 

 

What started as informal discussions about a better future for women, resulted in the creation of Afromuvaras, a business initiative of female cacao producers that belong to the Afro-Colombian Community Council Rescate las Varas. Today, Afromuvaras is comprised of 586 women entrepreneurs from 10 villages, including craftswomen, housewives, singers and soccer players. Each woman sees in cacao an opportunity to apply their knowledge in a vocation different from housework.

“Not just our husbands, the main challenge is ourselves, because we do not believe in ourselves or recognize our own capacities. Here women think that their only role is to be at home and that this is what they should do until they die”, said Ana Ponce, a producer of Afromuvaras.

With the support of the municipal administration and USAID, and with an increasingly strong and viable economy based on cacao, women in Tumaco are demanding gender equality. Ana Ponce and the women of Afromuvaras are motivating others to fight for their rights and leave a clear path for future generations.

Strong evidence of this paradigm shift is Tumaco’s Secretary of Women’s Affairs, which was created in 2021 to work with local women on strengthening women’s rights and access to land. Thanks to a robust strategy aimed at rural women, the Secretary is raising awareness about different forms of gender violence and empowering women to make decisions that contribute to reversing this situation.

“When we are with women in our workshops and we hear them say, “I have to put up with so much from him because I depend economically on him” or “if I report him, who will sustain me?”, we explain to them that these are examples of patrimonial and economic violence.”
-Patricia Castro, the Secretary of Women’s Affairs in Tumaco

A boost for economic development

In 2021, USAID, through its Land for Prosperity Activity, facilitated the creation of a cacao Public-Private Partnership (PPP) in the region that aims to strengthen producer associations like Afromuvaras so they can improve the quality of their grain and access new markets. In 2020, Afromuvaras installed a cacao processing center, a key meeting point where the women come together for the post-harvest process and to define the marketing strategy.

The women from Afromuvaras are aware of the importance of continuing to modernize the cacao production process, so they can offer international buyers a premium product. Still, producing high-quality cacao is one of their biggest challenges.

Under the PPP, they established commercial relationships with CacaoHunters, experts in cacao and one of the country’s biggest buyers and exporters. Today, CacaoHunters buys dry cacao from Afromuvaras at a premium price that recognizes quality.

To leverage the market linkages with CacaoHunters and other buyers, the PPP is also supporting the implementation of traceability models, being led by other partners such as Microsoft, Logyca, the Agency for Rural Development, and USAID.

“With the traceability system, we will be able to know each step of the process. To know which cacao comes from which farm, what the conversion rate was, and how long it took. And as a producer I will be able to know how much I am producing and what quality it is,” explains Johanna Rodríguez, co-founder of Afromuvaras.

Tumaco is being increasingly recognized for its cacao, which has an artisan touch from these Afro-Colombian women and their knowledge of best processing practices. “Today, clients are asking for cacao with certain characteristics, and thanks to the traceability system I can negotiate better conditions because I know the quality of my product,” says Rodríguez.

Customer service

Before the PPP, the women from Afromuvaras hardly had an email address. Thanks to USAID and Microsoft support, the association inaugurated a digital center in the center of San Luis Roble at the end of 2021. The digital center, installed with support from the Land for Prosperity Activity, offers the women entrepreneurs a valuable chance to connect with their clients in real-time to share strategic information about their product and build trust around their value proposition.

The center offers free internet to the entire community. In rural Tumaco, young people are the most interested in using these opportunities to further their education and access information. Senior citizens also come to the center to learn how to use the internet.

The women from Afromuvaras are strengthening their association by modernizing the production of high-quality cacao. However, they also want to be known for their support to the community, especially to young people that already have a committee inside the association so that they can learn about cacao production and promote generational change.

“An association also becomes attractive to clients when, apart from a certified quality, they can see that there is a social and environmental commitment that has a positive impact on the community.” – Oberman Torres, secretary of the Technical Secretariat of the cacao PPP in Tumaco.

Today, Afromuvaras are producing 2-3 metric tons (MT) of cacao each month and want to increase production to 5 MT. This goal, essentially doubling production, will only be possible by improving modernization, traceability, and the capacity of their members with up-to-date technology. With improved production of high-quality cacao, Tumaco will be known halfway across the world.

 

 

 

 

“Nothing is impossible for a woman, it just takes time to achieve it”

Learn more about Afromuvaras (en español) here

Tumaco, San Andres de Tumaco, Narino, Colombia
© 2022 Land for Prosperity

Cross posted from Land for Prosperity Exposure site

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