The aim of LAPs is to provide greater security and legal certainty of tenure and to contribute to the multiple use of ownership information by constructing, restructuring and/or improving LAS¹. Unlike agrarian reform projects, whose ultimate aim is the redistribution and reconfiguration of resource distribution schemes, as well as guaranteeing the rights to such resources, LAPs have aims that give preference to empowerment rather than security of tenure and to information development rather than territory.

The World Bank, FAO and other International Agencies have, over several decades, supported the development of agrarian reform projects and programmes which included land titling and distribution, hence particular emphasis on improving LAS. Titling processes and improving registration and cadastre systems formed only part of the project, and it was not until the last decades of the last century that LAPs began to take off as independent programmes.

The results of titling and registration programmes and projects have not always been successful². The assumption that the titling and registration of land rights would encourage efficient land markets and investment, economic growth and poverty reduction varies among cases. While positive effects can be found, for example, in the case of Thailand’s Land Titling Programme, benefits were less clear in cases found in Africa and Latin America. Some of the main problems include achieving results in the short term during the implementation of LAPs (5 to 6 years), when the effects of titling typically require longer periods of maturation. Additionally, linking the results of land titling to other policies, including investment, rural development or infrastructure development, has been challenging
In addition, the effects of regularization and titling were not uniform among all households and thus required different treatments. A study conducted regarding the effects of titling in Peru concluded that regularization and titling showed positive effects when analyzing access to credit, the increase in land value and the use of resources and conservation techniques by project beneficiaries. Analyses of small-holder farms with fewer resources, however, found that these impacts diminished considerably³.
A further comparative study of project impacts in Guatemala and El Salvador concluded that in El Salvador greater access to credit in private banking was found in the departments where the project carried out land adjudication. This was likely due to the better financial situation of beneficiaries compared to non-beneficiaries, and probably not merely caused by the effects of adjudication⁴. Furthermore, it was observed that initial land titling and registration were not in themselves an incentive for owners to register subsequent transactions concerning a particular parcel of land, and the effects of security and legal certainty of tenure therefore disappeared upon the conclusion of the project.

After a review of twelve World Bank titling projects, Watcher and English identified in 1992 that the problems that had limited project results included: lack of political support from national governments during project implementation; lack of institutional capacity combined with lack of will to commit the necessary financial resources for their support and restructuring; and finally, underestimation of the complexity and costs of the targets to be achieved during the preparatory design phase of projects⁵.

Although 20 years have elapsed since this evaluation, one of the limitations encountered in land regularization and good performance of LAPs is the state of the strength of some of the institutions involved in implementing LA processes. An evaluation carried out by the World Bank in 2007⁶ on a sample of 17 LAPs worldwide found some common problems in LAI structures in the Latin American countries analysed (Bolivia, Peru and El Salvador). The main problem was due to the structure of the institutional framework in which the management of LA processes was located, as the institutions which carry out land tenure registration, cadastre or regularization processes are located in different public administration sectors, with mandates and duties that are unclear and not always well differentiated (further information is provided on LAI coordination experiences in the fact sheet on Evaluation of cadastre-register linking systems in Central America).

Although the structures of these LAI frameworks depend on the specific conditions of each country and the degree of decentralization and devolution of its institutions, it is clear that the lack of good institutional infrastructure and flawed definition of mandates, specific roles and duties for each institution creates serious problems for the operation of services, lack of coordination and inefficiency, and encourages lack of governance.

The overlapping, contradiction and obsolescence of some regulations in the legal frameworks that govern LAS is also a feature present in some Latin American countries. This situation as regards land laws reduces impacts in the operation of LAPs. In this respect a study conducted by the World Bank and USAID on lessons learned in land administration policy highlighted the importance of including new legislation in the pilot phase of LAPs, linked to their implementation⁷.