Photo: COWI A/S

Land administration in Bolivia 

During the past decade many developing countries started paying increased attention to land reforms and land administration in their respective countries.

In Bolivia the work with land reform has been going on for some years and in 1999 Kampsax A/S (COWI A/S) started working on a comprehensive land administration project in Bolivia.

From 1999 to mid 2005 COWI carried out and implemented the project 'National Land Administration Project, Legal Rural Cadastre (CAT-SAN) which was part of the nation-wide 'Bolivian National Land Administration Project'.

The COWI project aimed at establishing cadastre, demarcation, registration and adjudication of rural property in an area of more than 28,000 Km² in the two Bolivian Departments of Santa Cruz and Beni.

Systematic registration

The purpose of our surveying and registration of properties in the two Departments was to determine the extent, location, and ownership of the land - a work with substantial advantages for the landowners.

Seen in a broader perspective, this systematic property registration is, however, going to ensure and document future individual property rights and set property valuations, entitling the owners to take out new loans to invest in land improvements, etc.

Examples of what the project covers:

  • Basic mapping, including orthophotos, orthoimages and digital cartography of the areas surveyed.
  • Cadastral surveying, i.e. precise boundary delimitation for each estate using GPS.
  • Systematic compilation of existing cadastral records.
  • Juridical and technical evaluation of field data and public dissemination of the evaluation results.
  • Drafting of official Title Adjudication Resolutions Public awareness campaigns with the purpose of sensitising the public.
  • Development of a comprehensive geographic information system (GIS) to be used by our client National Institute of Agrarian Reform and the Land Registry Offices for normative and legal registration purposes.