Paper presented at a Workshop at Universidad Publica de Navarra (Navarre Public University), Pamplona-Iruña (Spain), November 5-7, 2009.

In most countries, land consolidation was first introduced in rural areas, with legislation suitable for urban areas being drafted at a later date. This is also true of Norway. The first evidence of urban competency in the legislation is found in the Land Consolidation Act from 1950. It is important to note that in Norway land consolidation remains the exclusive province of the court system. This, as far as we know, is unique for Norway.

The Land Consolidation Act has recently been revised. The changes came
into force on 1 July 2006 and 1 January 2007. The main changes in the Act are that
the land consolidation court now has formal jurisdiction to handle land consolidation
cases for all types of properties independent of location, unless particular cases are
specifically removed from the court's jurisdiction in the Act. The Act provides for
two new types of land consolidation cases in Section 2. The paper analyzes these
different revisions.

Land consolidation courts deal with cases where the relationship between holders of grazing rights needs be regulated, but also where the rights holders are competing with other potential land uses, such as building holiday cabins, forestry, hunting, etc. These cases are governed by the provisions of sections 3-8 and 3-10 of the Land Consolidation Act.

Cotton production substantially contributes to the GDP of Uzbekistan. It is produced under a state procurement policy, according to which farmers have to allocate half of their land for cotton, fulfill cotton output levels and sell the entire harvest of cotton to the state. Land is state owned and a land consolidation process is in place, where land allocated to a farm can be reduced if cotton production targets are not met.

In this article we investigate the potential for and limitations of land consolidation as a tool for rural development in transitional environments, focusing on the Khorezm region in Uzbekistan, Central Asia. We frame our analysis in a broader evaluation of land consolidation as a tool for economic development based on European experiences.

In many countries of the world, rural areas are characterized by a defective spatial structure of agricultural land. The most frequent defects are large fragmentation and distribution of farmland. The fragmentation of land has been an issue widely described by many authors throughout the world. The problem of the distribution of land owned by individual farmers is slightly different, since due to the complexity of the problem this issue was not widely explored in Poland (plot patchwork) or in other countries of Europe and the world.

It is crucial to pay close attention to the ecological security in land consolidation and utilization of coastal tidal areas and make an appropriate zoning scheme to meet the characteristics of its particular landscape. Landscape security patterns can identify the patterns that are crucial to the health and security of landscape ecological processes by analyzing and simulation them. This article applies the theory of landscape security pattern to land consolidation zoning in a coastal tidal area, Dafeng District, Yancheng, Jiangsu Province.

Farmland fragmentation and farmland consolidation are two sides of the same coin paradoxically viewed as farmland management tools. While there is a vast body of literature addressing the connections between farmland fragmentation and farmland consolidation on the one hand and agriculture production and crops diversification on the other hand, their relationship with variations in food security is still under-explored. This challenges policy makers about whether and how to devise policies in favor of fragmentation conservation or defragmentation.

The dearth of land information on customary lands limits the development and application of land consolidation. This paper presents and discusses the results of an experiment carried out to test the potential of participatory land administration applied on customary lands in support of land consolidation. The concept of Participatory Land Administration (PLA) which is developed in the context of the evolution of crowdsourced, volunteered, and participatory approaches provides new insights into neogeography and neocadastre, and fit-for-purpose and pro-poor land administration.

Fit-for-purpose inspired approaches to land tenure recordation are being developed and implemented mainly in the form of pilot projects in various countries and application contexts. These approaches combine mobile digital technologies and flexible database structures with community based approaches for capturing and managing tenure rights. We discuss 10 such initiatives.

Fit-for-purpose inspired approaches to land tenure recordation are being developed and implemented mainly in the form of pilot projects in various countries and application contexts. These approaches combine mobile digital technologies and flexible database structures with community based approaches for capturing and managing tenure rights. We discuss 10 such initiatives.