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Box 2 Acquiring property rights for the poorIn Pakistan, incremental expansion of urban servicesallowed conversion of informal settlements (katchiabadis) in Hyderabad into legal housing neighbourhoods.In Trinidad and Tobago these alternativeinstruments have the advantage of being part of anincremental process of acquiring secure tenure. There,the State Land (Regularisation of Tenure) Law of 1998paved the way for progressive issue of Certificates ofComfort, Statutory Leases and Deeds of Lease to informalsettlers on state land. A similar model has beenunder development in Namibia since the late 1990sand proposes a continuum comprising Starter, Landholdand Freehold titles. In Brazil, the usucapião is aform of adverse possession over private land, so thereis no need for authorities to issue a title: the judicialsentence declaring that a new real right over the landhas been constituted over time is the legal documentnecessary to promote land registration and ownershiptransfer. This can be done individually or collectively,and people get freehold rights either individually orin a form of co-ownership. It is a form of prescriptiveacquisition, a real right (in the legal sense), and nottemporary. It can be sold, inherited, etc., and there isno reason for banks not to accept it (Fernandes 2005).In India it is common practice to issue pattas givingrights to the poor over government land. The patta, adocument issued by the Land Revenue Department,may be freehold or leasehold (99/30/10/1yr), renewableor not. It specifies conditions for use, transfer andinheritance, and may be used to regularise occupationor assign new plots. The patta is usually given free ofcost, or with a small fee, and needs no registration toavail of rights specified. In states like Madhya Pradesh,Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and West Bengal, it canbe mortgaged against housing loans. If patta land isrequired for any ‘public purpose’, the holder has to beallotted alternate land. In Andhra Pradesh alone, morethan 10 million pattas have been issued since 1962.(Banerjee 2006)infrastructure, or surveying, they offer widespreadcoverage at low cost, affordable by the poor.Recognising Customary Tenure and Communitiesas Bearers of Property Rights to Land and NaturalResourcesIndividual titling and/or alternative measures forincremental consolidation of property claims areappropriate and beneficial in many urban contexts.107 In rural contexts, especially in Africa andparts of Asia, they need to be phased in from otherforms of tenure security or replaced by new approachesto securing tenure to more fully cover thespectrum of the local economic practices and conditions.The 1990s and early 2000s are repletewith examples of legal reforms in the direction ofrecognising customary land rights (mainly in Africa,and notably in Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambiqueand some West African countries), and indigenousland rights (Philippines, Cambodia, Australia, anda number of countries in Latin America). Theseinnovations come from different contexts that maylimit comparability; nevertheless, one can extractcommon threads and identify common problemsthat will require attention in the years ahead. 108Broadly speaking, these laws share some of thefollowing characteristics or aspirations:• They recognise that in many contexts thesocial and economic value of land is best realisedby allowing land relations to be governedby rules of the community in which the landis located, rather than by imposed systems ofproperty law.• They reflect a conviction that communitybasedtenure regimes are often better atproviding security of tenure to individual cultivators.Often, individual cultivators fear dis-88