Keynote Speaker Biography

Hernando de Soto, Economist, Author, and President, Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD)

Designs for Poverty: Formalizing Landownership

Hernando de Soto is a celebrated economist and author and president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), a nonprofit organization based in Lima, Peru.

Along with earning many awards and accolades, de Soto was selected by Time magazine in 1999 as one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century. The magazine also included him among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004. He has published two international best-selling books about economic and political development and is cochair with former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright on the Commission on Legal Empowerment for the Poor.

De Soto says that for some living in poverty, the land they occupy may be their only asset. Without legal recognition of landownership, the owner cannot leverage the land as collateral. This prevents the owner from accessing loans to possibly start a business or improve the property.

Many of de Soto's ideas were put into action less than a year ago when a pilot project in Ghana began using geospatial technologies to create a land titling process and GIS-based land records system. This implementation significantly reduced the time and costs involved in collecting and documenting property ownership information and increased the number of formalized land rights.

Read the de Soto article, "Peru Riots Create Reform Opportunity"—July 8, 2009.