Rumyana Tonchovska
Senior Land Administration and IT Officer
Climate, Energy and Tenure Division (NRC)
FAO

Biography
Rumyana Tonchovska is a Senior Land Administration Officer – IT at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. Rumyana is a key advisor to the Bank land team on the design, supervision and implementation of major IT systems for the land sector and building up Spatial Data Infrastructure. She is assisting the countries to streamline the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines trough making best use of available technologies and data sets. Rumyana is currently working with the Bank land team on several innovation grants, aiming at building a local capacity for evidence based policy making in Agricultural sector. Approximately 65% of the $1.2 billion in Bank loans and credits to 23 countries in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region has been utilized for IT systems and now all of the countries in the region have automated systems providing good quality, transparent services in registration.

Abstract
Voluntary Guidelines of Responsible Governance of Tenure for Smart Cities

Governance of tenure makes a crucial difference to peoples’ livelihoods. Weak governance of tenure affects social stability, sustainable use of the environment, investment and economic growth. People can be condemned to a life of hunger and poverty if they lose their tenure rights to their homes, land, fisheries and forests and their livelihoods because of corrupt tenure practices or if implementing agencies fail to protect their tenure rights. People may even lose their lives when weak tenure governance leads to violent conflict. Responsible governance of tenure promotes sustainable social and economic development that can help eradicate poverty and food insecurity, and encourages responsible investment, thus contributes directly to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. International negotiations have centred attention on tenure relevance in addressing climate change, natural disasters, violent conflicts and migration from rural areas, and have covered core land administration themes of registration and cadastres, property valuation and taxation, spatial planning, dispute resolution, and standards for sharing spatial and other information on tenure. Other topics under debate included transfers of tenure rights through markets, expropriation, land reform, land redistribution and land consolidation. The negotiations resulted in the globally agreed document: Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security. The Guidelines are based on the principles of sustainable development and with the recognition of the centrality of land to development by promoting secure tenure rights and equitable access to land, fisheries and forests. Governments from all regions and with diverse political, economic, social and religious views negotiated the text. Civil society and private sector organizations also participated in the process. The implementation of the Guidelines has since been supported in the Rio +20 Declaration and by the United Nations General Assembly, G20, G8, l’Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie, and the Berlin Summits of Agricultural Ministers. Now we have the Guidelines, which provide a base for development of national and regional policies, strategies and legal framework for creating inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities. For example part 3 of the Guidelines, deals with legal recognition and allocation of tenure rights and duties and includes safeguards, public land and informal tenure; part 4 deals with transfers and other changes to tenure rights and duties and includes markets, investments, expropriation and compensation; part 5 deals with administration of tenure and includes valuation, taxation, regulated spatial planning, resolution of disputes over tenure rights; part 6 deals with Responses to climate change and emergencies. We have ICT and geospatial technologies, which provide tools for implementation of the developed policies and strategies for creating inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities. For example introduction of information systems to land registration is one among the most important steps reducing opportunities for corrupt and non-transparent land management. Services and governance are being improved by linking spatial data through e-governance, thereby providing governments with new ways to integrate planning, taxation, disaster risk management, and the monitoring, mitigation and adaptation of climate change. Importantly, technology can also provide safeguards to reduce the likelihood that women are disadvantaged in critical land administration transactions such as those recording and affecting marital property and inheritance. Professionals invested in land administration, urban planning, city management, policy makers and technology specialists can make a valuable contribution by developing relationships across borders and so exchange their experiences on how to improve governance of tenure and its administration.