August 2013: The newsletter on the Governance of Tenure produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) highlights the recent G8 communique referencing tenure, progress on regional awareness programs, opportunities for engaging family farmers in the application of the Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure, and a new edition of the Land Tenure Journal.
On the issue of raising regional awareness, the newsletter describes workshops on the Guidelines that were held in Cameroon, Fiji, Guyana, Jordan, Morocco, Rwanda and Ukraine, and which included the participation of over 360 participants from 85 countries. The workshops created opportunities to learn about the Guidelines, identify approaches to improving the governance of tenure, and propose ideas for in-country implementation. In addition, considerations on engaging family farmers were pursued through discussions related to the 2014 International Year of Family Farming. FAO notes upcoming workshops in Bulgaria, Colombia and Thailand.
The newsletter also introduces a new edition of the Land Tenure Journal, in which articles address: land reform in Moldova; participatory land management discussions in Darfur; agricultural land security in Viet Nam; the emergence of cooperatives in China; and land and marine tenure in French Polynesia.
Regarding FAO collaboration in Europe and Central Asia, the newsletter highlights the improvement of state registration and cadastre service in the Russian Federation that is planned over the next five years; increased access to property information in Ukraine; and improved accessibility to land administration services for actors in the Western Balkans. With regard to Russia, the newsletter outlines the goal for the application of a new roadmap for tenure reform that aims to increase, by 2018, electronic land registration applications. Highlighting success in Ukraine, the newsletter describes FAO and World Bank support for the issuance of state land deeds. In the Balkans, a new program seeks to demonstrate leadership on Inclusive and Informed Land Administration in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. [Publication: FAO Tenure Newsletter August 2013]