$9 Trillion In Unregistered
Land
The
second annual Clinton Global Initiative held in NYC last
week saw heads of state, celebrities and the super-rich,
gathering to raise funds to help solve the world’s problems.
The
buzz at this year’s meeting centered on a topic heretofore
all but ignored...registering poor people’s property so they
could borrow against it to build businesses, etc. Many
citizens of developing countries (estimated to be 85%) don’t
formally have title to their land, which is a key source of
urban poverty.
Unregistered land in developing countries has an estimated
total of over $9 trillion. It’s wealth locked-up, which
keeps people in poverty instead of being an asset that can
lift them up.
Saying
that “land ownership is the cornerstone of economic
stability in any region,” Craig DeRoy, the president of
First American Corp., a seller of title-insurance and credit
information, committed $1 million in cash and in-kind
services to develop a “template” to give the poor in
developing countries a way to establish land titles. |