Redlands, California — Hernando de Soto, a celebrated Peruvian economist and author and president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), a non-profit organisation based in Lima, Peru, will speak at the 2009 ESRI International User Conference (ESRI UC) in July. De Soto will share how geographic information system (GIS) technology is being used to formalize landownership—an approach he feels is helping the poor take a crucial first step away from poverty.
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.
