land Article Securing Land Rights for All through Fit-for-Purpose Land Administration Approach: The Case of Nepal Uma Shankar Panday 1,* , Raja Ram Chhatkuli 2, Janak Raj Joshi 3, Jagat Deuja 4,5, Danilo Antonio 6 and Stig Enemark 7 1 Department of Geomatics Engineering, Kathmandu University, Dhulikhel 45200, Nepal 2 UN-Habitat, P.O. Box 107, Kathmandu 44600, Nepal;
[email protected] 3 Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation, Kathmandu 44600, Nepal;
[email protected] 4 Community Self Reliance Centre (CSRC), Kathmandu 44700, Nepal;
[email protected] 5 Land Issues Resolving Commission (LIRC), Kathmandu 44620, Nepal 6 UN-Habitat/LHSS, P.O. Box 30030, Nairobi 00100, Kenya;
[email protected] 7 Department of Planning, The Technical Faculty of IT and Design, Aalborg University, 9000 Aalborg, Denmark;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +977-11-415100 Abstract: After the political change in Nepal of 1951, leapfrog land policy improvements have been recorded, however, the land reform initiatives have been short of full success. Despite a land ad- ministration system based on cadaster and land registries in place, 25% of the arable land with an estimated 10 million spatial units on the ground are informally occupied and are off-register. Recently, a strong political will has emerged to ensure land rights for all. Providing tenure security to all these occupants using the conventional surveying and land administration approach demands a large amount of skilled human resources, a long timeframe and a huge budget. To assess the suitability of the fit-for-purpose land administration (FFPLA) approach for nationwide mapping and registration Citation: Panday, U.S.; Chhatkuli, of informality in the Nepalese context, the identification, verification and recordation (IVR) of the R.R.; Joshi, J.R.; Deuja, J.; Antonio, D.; people-to-land relationship was conducted through two pilot studies using a participatory approach Enemark, S.