How stronger land systems can spur economic growth and jobs

Secure land access is fundamental to economic growth and job creation. Yet, we need to reform the ways in which we manage land if we’re to get ahead of the global jobs crisis. Improving land systems can help optimize the use of critical resources to better meet the development and infrastructure challenges of today and the future. 

But what exactly are land systems? They are the rules, institutions, and databases that governments use to manage land. These include the laws and regulations governing land rights, land markets, and land use; the agencies responsible for implementing these laws and regulations; and the land registries and cadasters (official records of land ownership and boundaries) and other land information systems that agencies use to plan and record changes in land rights and land use.

Here's why land systems are critical for economic development. They can help:

1. Create jobs and growth. As World Bank Group President Ajay Banga outlined in a recent Financial Times op-ed, better land rules make it easier to do business. Streamlining access to property ownership can support entrepreneurship, innovation, and expansion, facilitating the creation of jobs and new business ventures. Registered rights can also enable landowners to reinvest their wealth and seek alternative livelihoods, which can lead to higher-skilled employment. 

2. Unlock private capital. With registered property rights and transparent rules, people can use their land as collateral to access private credit, which can then be invested in their businesses, homes, and livelihoods. In urban areas in particular, digital land records can boost credit access by 10.5 percent on average, rising to 15 percent over time.  

3. Fund essential infrastructure and services. Land and property taxes are underutilized in low-income countries, where they generate just 0.6 percent of gross domestic product, compared to 2.2 percent in industrialized nations. By updating land records and making valuation systems more efficient, land systems can provide a stable source of government revenue and public funding to invest in essential infrastructure and services.  

4. Scale up energy access. Demand for critical minerals is expected to rise by over 450 percent by 2050 compared to 2018. More than half of these resources may be located on or near Indigenous lands, yet only about half of Indigenous land rights are formally recognized. We must prioritize securing existing land rights to avoid land disputes, foster sustainable investments, and ensure that local landholders can contribute to—and benefit from—increased energy access. 

5. Help cities manage urban growth. By 2050, two out of three people globally will be in cities and need places to live, work, and access green spaces. Accurate land systems can ensure that people’s homes and public spaces are protected and identify land that’s available for infrastructure or housing development. These databases can also be linked to disaster risk information to help identify at-risk areas, conduct risk-sensitive planning and zoning, and provide assistance after disasters.  

6. Support women and food security. Improving women’s access to productive resources, including land, can enable them to produce 20 to 30 percent more food. This may not only increase national agricultural outputs by as much as 4 percent, but could also have positive impacts on children’s nutrition, health, and education

This is why the World Bank is investing $2.9 billion to strengthen land systems in 31 countries. World Bank-financed land projects are working to secure existing land tenure, including for women, digitize land systems, facilitate resilient land use, and enable access to land for infrastructure. For example:

• In Indonesia, World Bank financing has helped the government register more than 8 million land parcels—42 percent to women—to secure tenure and incentivize sustainable land management. In all, the government’s land registration program over the last eight years has registered over 60 million parcels, creating over 38,000 jobs and increasing by 12-fold the number of private surveying firms. A recently launched World Bank follow-up project will register the land rights of over 11 million more people, connect nearly 15 million people to digitally-enabled services, deliver 500 spatial plans, and improve land valuation in 100 local governments.

• In Côte D’Ivoire, the World Bank helped unlock rural land registration, leading to increased tenure security (especially for women), improved trust in government services, reduced land conflicts, and more sustainable land management. This five-year project delivered five times as many land records as were issued in the previous 20 years and strengthened the country’s land systems. This has laid the foundation for a new results-based operation that will create 4,000 new or better jobs—30 percent for women—and connect over 1.4 million people to new digitally-enabled land registration services across half the country.

• In Colombia, the World Bank is supporting six pilot municipalities to strengthen their land systems, including by streamlining municipal cadaster procedures and standardizing tax management. These reforms have increased property tax revenues by 35 percent on average and up to 150 percent between 2021 and 2023. They also reduced the municipalities’ dependence on the central government’s resources by as much as 24 percent from 2019 to 2023. Since Bogota started requiring annual updates to its cadasters in 2010, the number of properties in the cadaster increased by 25 percent, property tax revenue increased by three times to $1.1 billion, and the cost per parcel of updating the cadaster decreased from over $135 in 2005 to $10.

To share best practices for strengthening land systems and much more, we are hosting the World Bank Land Conference between May 5–8, 2025.  Join us online for the opening session, How Land Systems Create Jobs and Unlock the Future of Energy, which will be broadcast from 11:00 am–12:00 pm ET on May 5 on World Bank Live. We look forward to engaging with you then on this crucial development issue.