Cadastre

This is an inventory which contains a graphic, alphanumeric and statistical description of property within a particular territory. It operates in the public interest and serves legal, economic, fiscal and administrative purposes and all those who determine the laws and regulations of a country.

Cadastral Maintenance

This is a series of technical, legal and administrative activities that are ongoing and necessary for amending spatial data and data referring to the cadastral titleholder, contained in the cadastral database. Cadastral maintenance is not simply the action of changing or amending data at the request of third parties or when circumstances require; it needs to be a planned research and inspection activity, aimed at ensuring that cadastral records are correct, up to date and real.

Cadastral Mapping

Cadastral formation or mapping, as it is also known in Guatemala and other Latin American countries, involves: a) identification or documentation of each property with its related physical and descriptive data, location and numbering on the site map or plan; b) completing the property form, which constitutes the property identification deed, duly signed and dated by the cadastral official. Cadastral mapping can also be described as focused mapping and mass mapping; focused mapping refers to cadastral mapping on demand or of specific small areas; mass mapping refers to cadastral surveying covering a greater geographical area (municipal districts, departments or region).

Cadastral Office / Land Registry Office

This is an office that forms part of the geographical information and territorial planning institutions. In Nicaragua, the Cadastral Office forms parts of geographical and territorial planning institutions. In other countries, it is an entity that operates in conjunction with the Registry, as in El Salvador and Honduras.

Cadastral Surveying

This is a technical process for identifying and recording each plot of freehold land within the administrative area of a cadastral unit. In some land administration programmes cadastral surveying is the process of the field collection of information on land ownership, the cadastral delineation of parcels and the topographical definition of the limits of parcels.

Cadastral Zone

This is a territory or part of a territory where a cadastral process is declared to have been established.

Cadastre Register Linking System

Reference to standards and procedures applied institutionally to link the main cadastral entities and the register of real rights, i.e. to denote the correlation between property managed by both institutions. It can range from a simple reference to integrated management. Generally, the linking system can be supported by computerized tools that can speed up management and improve compliance with the standards that govern such linking.

Clearing Tenure

The act of clearing tenure is carried out through a process of regularization, before or by the relevant authority, during which a real right is assigned and which describes the physical characteristics of the property and is entered in the land register.

 Clearing has two aspects:

1. Legal clearing
   Assigning a real right to a natural person or legal entity and entering their property in public registers.
2. Physical clearing
   This involves the physical identification of the property, determining its shape, dimensions, neighbouring properties and geographical location.

Control Group and Treatment Group

In a controlled experiment, persons or objects of statistical interest are known as experimental units. These are divided into at least one experimental group, from which it is hoped to receive information based on a known stimulus, and another “control” group, which does not receive the stimulus. The provision or withholding of the stimulus is defined as treatment.

Common Land

Common land consists of land that belongs to a local collective, generally occupied by agricultural land, pasture, stubble or woods, or kept under open herding. Common land is intended for individual use by the inhabitants of a locality (commune or municipal district), or for collective use, but under the control of local authorities (traditional authorities or the municipal council).

Cost Efficiency Analysis

This technique evaluates which programme, policy or technology will achieve the target results at a lower cost. It is used to measure the efficiency of a project compared with its costs. It is similar to a cost-benefit analysis in several aspects but no monetary value is attached to all the expected benefits resulting from the project or the alternatives considered. It is used when various alternatives which can achieve very similar results can be compared.

Counterfactual Scenario

What would have happened if the project had never been implemented or what would have happened normally without any intervention.

Customary Law

Traditional or customary land laws are the set of legal rules that constitute the traditions of a community or population. Customary law currently coexists with objective law and in the majority of Latin American countries it is subordinate to state-governed objective law and the State’s will for it to prevail. As far as land is concerned, customary law governs the land rights of the majority of indigenous populations and of some communal lands. The relationship to the land is not an autonomous social relationship, consequently traditional or customary law which administers it should be interpreted in the light of the combination of social relationships and the significance attributed to these.