The Role of Blockchain in Documenting Land Users' Rights: The Canonical Case of Farmers in the Vernacular Land Market

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the potential of blockchain technology in addressing the documentation of users' land rights in the informal land rental market. Blockchain technology is a peer-to-peer protocol that can be leveraged to keep track of transactions over the internet. Publicized for its use in the bitcoin revolution, the technology provides transparency and traceability that can be used in the management of land rights. When it comes to the formalization of land rights, blockchain technology promises to authenticate owners and other users of land, and provides a fixed ledger of land use rights transactions. At present, blockchain technology is being explored as a proof of concept in several countries to track land titles (state to individual). We extend the idea to capture the granting of land use rights (individual to individual) making use of the decentralization, peer-to-peer nature of blockchain technology. While the technology is not a panacea to all land administration challenges, it can offer an effective means to manage land transactions, provide digital documentation to actors in the informal land rental market and reduce inefficiency in land systems. However, the uptake of the technology in land administration is limited by human related factors. These limitations include, but are not limited to, the accuracy of data being entered into the system, the ability of the system to facilitate data preservation, pre-existing institutional and legal pillars, and the digital divide across communities. Part of overcoming these barriers requires the political will of governments to invest in digital technologies and develop institutional capacities to overcome current limitations to bring land management into the industry 4.0 era.

Living on the block: How equitable is tokenized equity?

“…A range of critical blockchain scholars have established how "blockchain cannot magically fix per-existing contestations over lands and the bringing of communal tenure under statutory regulations. Such issues are related to the institutional and legal pillars of land administration which have to determine how best to bring diverse tenure regimes under statutory oversight" (Daniel and Ifejika Speranza, 2020;Vos et al, 2017). It is important to challenge the rhetoric of "immutability" often is connected to blockchain narratives, since blockchains and smart contract algorithms can still be exploited by in possible code loopholes.…”

“…In the STO, distributed ledgers are proposed to be used as the technology underlying new forms of land/property documentation, ownership, and inhabitation – from conducting and recording land surveys and title creation to transference of land/property rights. This paper looks toward the means of contesting predatory formations around the spatial data financialization of housing and land, critically comparing distributed ledger projects that claim to inject equity in the system by extending purchasing power to marginalized people of color in the United States (EquityCoin), others that pose alternative housing models and economies such as cooperativism and commoning (DOMA), and still others that seek land rights (Daniel and Ifejika Speranza, 2020) and Indigenous data sovereignty (Rodriguez-Lonebear, 2016). This research is positioned alongside scholars critically analyzing the implications of distributed ledgers for urban governance and alternative economies (Gloerich et al 2020).…”

Blockchain for decentralised rural development and governance

“…Land Registries (or lack of in many cases) need reforming. Exploring the role of blockchain in land-ownership and rentals is already underway, with Daniel and Ifejika Speranza [114] using the example of the informal land rental industry, the OECD offering three case studies of Georgia, Honduras and Ghana [115] and the concept being theoretically applied to Serbia [116]. The need is particularly apparent in countries with no such form of registry and where land disputes are frequent and sometimes violent, like in Afghanistan [117].…”

Blockchain Software Selection as a Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Problem

“…Blockchain technology offers an effective tool for land transactions, provides digital documentation to agents in the land rental market and reduces inefficiency in land systems [34]. This technology can build an open agricultural cadaster and banks can reject loans application from customers who have already pledged their land in another bank.…”