Land tenure describes individuals’ or groups’ rights to occupy and/or use land. Because of often competing systems of formalized legal legislation and informal community traditions, the scale of land tenure therefore ranges from full legal title and ownership to squatter.

 

For the world’s urban poor, access to secure land tenure is a particularly acute problem. With the costs of land and housing rising faster than incomes in many cities of the developing world, a rising proportion of people are forced to live in marginalized areas where lack of secure land tenure provides residents with little incentive to gradually improve their housing. The threat of eviction and lack of public servicing results in the physical conditions of such settlements remaining inadequate, and contributing to the environmental degradation of the only available lands for the urban poor.

 

Public authorities are reluctant to recognize the residents as legal occupants of informal urban settlements, which prevents the implementation of basic services such as water, sanitation, electricity and waste collection. Moreover, without formal title to occupy urban land, the poor are unable to use the property as collateral against any bank loans that could be used for income generating activities. Similarly, the value of houses and/or lands occupied by the poor who lack secure tenure do not rise over time as is the case with those who hold formal titles.

 

The Urban Poverty and Environment (UPE) Program supports research that addresses the types of reforms that provide inhabitants of low-income neighbourhoods with security of tenure and that will encourage service providers of water, sanitation and waste management services to operate.