Land ownership is something many of us take for granted. For those who own property, a legal document exists that proves the definition of ownership and \u00a0boundaries of the property.\u00a0 However, it is widely stated that an estimated 75% of land ownership globally has not been mapped or formally documented.<\/p>\n
A five decades civil war displaced over eight million Colombians has left Colombia as one of many countries in need of an efficient solution to collect boundary and ownership information. Impacted by cartels and internal conflict with rebel groups for decades, a vast number of rural parcels are not yet mapped and recorded.<\/p>\n
Colombia has a deeds-based land administration system with a history of sporadic approaches to establish reliable cadastral records. \u201cA couple of years ago, the official estimate was four million parcels that need to be regularized,\u201d said Mathilde Molendijk, Kadaster International\u2019s regional manager for Latin America. \u201cThe real number now is at least 12 million, and probably several millions more. Only five percent of the country\u2019s land has an up-to-date cadaster, and nearly 30 percent has never even been part of a cadaster. So this is a huge task for the Colombian government.\u201d<\/p>\n