Kabul Faces Urban Land Crisis, Warns World Bank Report

Contacts:

In Kabul:

Abdul Raouf Zia (93) 702 80800

Azia@worldbank.org

In Washington:

Nina Vucenik

202- 458-7321

nvucenik@worldbank.org

WASHINGTON, June 22, 2006 ─ A lack of a legal and regulatory framework for land management poses a considerable challenge in managing Kabul’s massive population growth amounting 15 percent per year between 1999 and 2002, says a World Bank report released today.

According to the report titled Kabul: Urban Land in Crisis, the city’s population was estimated at around 3 million in 2004. Growth is expected to remain around 5 percent in the next few years, representing a yearly increase of 150,000 people. 

Kabul’s growth has led to proliferation of informal housing, which is perhaps the most visible feature of the city. Informal settlements now shelter a staggering 80 percent of the city’s population and cover over two-thirds of its residential land area. The report says informal development has provided some benefits to both the residents and the government, even though it has also resulted in legal and regulatory violations and insufficient space for infrastructure and social facilities.  

These settlements represent a fixed private capital investment of US$2.5 billion (excluding land value), and have prevented a larger problem of homelessness and formation of refugee camps. The report cites calculations that the levy of the existing local tax (safai) in only 45 informal neighborhoods (13 percent of Kabul’s settlements) could add Af 56 million in Kabul Government revenues after four years, almost double the current Kabul safai income of Af 30 million. 

Most informal neighborhoods in Kabul lack basic infrastructure, including access to water, sewerage, and drainage, the report says. Yet there is no technical reason for the lack of provision of services in these settlements as most of them are on land that is considered flat.  The obstacle is, however, a financial one. Service delivery and infrastructure provision in Kabul is vastly under-funded. Surprisingly, the report finds that houses in informal settlements are extremely solid, built from traditional mud brick which provide protection against Kabul’s winter.

“Informal settlements are here to stay. These houses in no way resemble the informal shacks we see in many other developing countries. Most migrants have built mostly solid and well-designed houses,” said Soraya Goga, World Bank Urban Specialist. “A long term development strategy for the city should regard the informal settlements as a legitimate solution to the problem of shelter. The real question is how to service the informal settlements and address land tenure within the settlements.”

Kabul’s main problem is not housing, but access to land, provision of infrastructure, and addressing of property and tenure rights and current and potential disputes over land, the report says. The key issue is to promote the legal and regulatory framework for land development, including the guarantee of property rights, and an institutional environment to encourage people to be able to build their own homes, even while the public sector provides infrastructure.      

The report also examines property disputes in Kabul. Contrary to common belief, it found that the actual volume of formal property disputes is not high, numbering only a few thousand. World Bank Urban Specialist Goga notes that most formal conflicts pertain to high-value properties, and it is the value rather than volume that gives the conflict issue a high profile.

“The potential for conflict remains,” Goga says. “But it arises from chronic insecurity of the expanding informal settlements and from poor governance. Several interventions, including granting land tenure to informal settlers and instituting a dispute resolution system to verify ownership, are required to address this issue.”  

The overall system of land management must reaffirm informal methods of property rights and dispute resolution, the report says. Both community based mechanisms of dispute resolution currently in place and formal courts systems need to be supported and strengthened and standards of transparency and accountability need to be raised for both formal and informal management systems. These reforms, coupled with investments in infrastructure, will serve to make Afghanistan’s urban areas better engines of economic growth and healthier places for the growing urban population.