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26Understanding Urban Safety and SecurityBox 2.1 The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami: Victims and land tenureLand tenure is another institution which, if weak or corrupt, canincrease vulnerability to hazard. For individuals or families living ininsecure land tenure situations (e.g. squatting on privately ownedland or on land for which a title does not exist), once displacedthey may be unable to return. For some people, assistance torebuild may require documentation, or one or more other partiesmay claim that the land is theirs. Beyond being poor and living instructurally weak homes close to the sea, many tsunami-struckcommunities lived on government or privately held land, or landwith multiple claims. Land grabs plagued coastal communitieswhere undocumented and uncertain land status provided governmentand private landowners opportunities to evict residents. Inother cases, ownership documents were destroyed and physicalproperty lines were non-existent. Still others faced discriminationby regulations instituted post-tsunami under the pretext ofreducing vulnerability, such as banning rebuilding within certaindistances of the sea.These situations plague thousands of tsunami survivorsacross the affected region; but many communities are seeking waysof rebuilding their lives, including improving land tenure security.New strategies are emerging across the region. To begin, manycommunities are simply going back to their land to rebuild, evenwithout permission, or while the land is still being disputed.This was the strategy of the Aceh’s Udeep Beusaree network ofvillages and Thai communities, who then used their solidarity andoccupation as a negotiation tool. These and other communitiesalso mapped their settlements, collected information on historicalownership and prepared redevelopment plans. Two importantsolutions have transpired and are a result of communities comingtogether, as well as networking with other communities: landsharing and collective land tenure arrangements. Land sharingentails disputed land being shared by both parties. The communityrebuilds on one portion of the land with legal and secure rights, andthe landowner develops the other portion commercially. Collectiveland tenure includes collective leases, collective title and collectiveuser rights. The community is the unit of ownership/lease holding,which can fend off challenges and manipulation more easily thanindividuals can. Plots cannot be sold independently. In this way,solutions are being found to institutional problems that have madecommunities vulnerable for generations. Many previously vulnerableresidents now have a base from which to lobby government andto fight private interests. With legal rights to their land, they will beable to more securely invest in their homes and property, improvingtheir human and physical security, and more easily accessassistance in the event of hazardous events.Source: Rowbottom, 2007Threats to urbansafety and security… are closely linkedto many factors atdifferent geographiclevels of analysis:global, national,urban, neighbourhoodor community,household andindividualnormal police presence. Similarly, studies of the healthimpacts of urban environmental problems are closely tied tothe availability and condition of infrastructure. Indeed, theyshow patterns of causation that clearly demonstrate howvarious types of infrastructure can alleviate specific healthrisks. 11RISK FACTORS ATDIFFERENT LEVELS OFANALYSISAs introduced in Chapter 1, the threats to urban safety andsecurity addressed in this Global Report are closely linked tomany factors at different geographic levels of analysis. Inorder to identify the location of risks as well as the multiplelevels of causation, this section examines risk factors at thefollowing analytic levels: global, national, urban, neighbourhoodor community, household and individual. Specialattention is paid to underlying patterns of causation,highlighting the cumulative impact of the identified factors,as well as their interdependence in several spheres of activity:social, economic and environmental. As many studies ofurban safety and security suggest, there are multiple formsof interaction that operate simultaneously to create risks andcondition the vulnerabilities experienced by nations, cities,communities, households and individuals. The conceptualtask is how to describe and distinguish these different interactionsand to assess their relative weights. In this regard, itis important to stress that factors beyond the urban levelhave considerable impact on conditions of urban safety andsecurity.Global forcesThree aspects of global forces are likely to have significantimpacts on urban safety and security: the global economyand, particularly, financial markets; the global environmentand the likely impacts of climate change; and increaseduncertainty due to the interaction of global forces and theconsequent weakening of the capacity of national and localinstitutions to manage risks and reduce vulnerabilities. Eachhas direct and indirect impacts on the three threats to urbansafety and security addressed by this report: crime andviolence, forced evictions and insecurity of tenure, andnatural and human-made disasters.■ The global economyThe processes of globalization of the world economy havesignificantly reduced the independence of national and localeconomies. The formation of a global capital market, thediffusion and dominant role of technology in informationflows and decision-making, and the liberalization of theseflows through the application of neo-liberal economicpolicies at the global and national levels have introducednew actors into the world of national and local policymakers.No longer can governments manage their economies(i.e. interest rates, flows of private investment now knownas foreign direct investment, trade projections, and commod-