Development of Pro poor and Gender Responsive System (ProGResS) of Land Governance in Nepal
The Land Administration System (LAS) of Nepal experiences two major lacking from pro poor and gender responsive perspective of governance:1) Pro poor and gender responsive socio economic data of the land owners are unavailable 2) It lacks information on informal land tenure under which significant population are living with unsecured tenure and without formal spatial recognition. Most of the people suffering from these two major pitfalls of Nepalese LAS are poor, marginalized and Socio Economically Disadvantaged (SED) especially women. Due to lack of pro poor and gender responsive information in the existing LAS, it is difficult to formulate evidence based policies and make informed decision to ensure equitable access and meaningful control over land for the target group. This study investigates and develops a proto type of open source Pro poor and Gender Responsive System (ProGResS) for land governance. Existing LAS in Nepal is extended with the development of three new modules for Data Acquisition, Data Analysis and Data Dissemination. Identification, Verification and Recording (IVR) process was carried out in participatory approach in selected study area to collect primary data on informality and socio economic status of land owners and/or settlers. The ProGResS module was tested and validated widely among the stakeholders and results were found encouraging.