Dynamic nomadic cadastres

A cadastre is a parcel-based and up-to-date land information system containing a record of interests (viz., rights, restrictions, and responsibilities) together with a geometric description of land parcels and their boundaries (FIG 1995). A cadastre is seen as the database establishing the core of a broader land administration system, aimed at determining, recording, and informing about the ownership, value, and use of land when implementing land management policies (UN 1996). Rights to land might be held under various legal regimes, such as statutory law, common law, and customary law. The cadastral process includes adjudication of existing land right, however, mainly when regulated in a formal law (e.g., “ownership” and “freehold”). In areas where customary tenure prevails, cadastres hardly have coverage because the definitions of land rights, allocation, and protection are outside the formal law. Adjudication also assumes the existence of land parcels and boundaries. This causes a problem where either boundaries are conceptually not known in local cultures or land rights or land uses show a dynamic aspect, for example, if they change from time to time. This is the situation that pastoralists face: their land tenure developed within local customary traditions is often not recognized in statutory law. The dynamic nature of their land use does not comply very well with the adjudication requirements of determinable owners, land parcels, and boundaries.