Land Governance for Surveyors : the VGGT in the Curriculum

Abstract

Strengthening land governance in professional surveying curricula and academic research has been an important theme at the FIG Academic Members Forum. A major tool to achieve good land governance are ‘The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security’, the VGGT. 1 During the FIG Working Week in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2016, the FIG Academic Members decided to form a working group ‘Exploring the VGGT in Practice’. The aim of the working group is to identify and strengthen the role of the surveying and land professional in the implementation of the VGGT. One of the activities by the working group is a study on how the VGGT are represented in the surveying curricula in order to support the FIG community in the implementation of the VGGT in the professional surveying education. This paper addresses the outcome of the study and gives a first picture of how the VGGT are being addressed in professional surveying education. Case examples of programs and relevant course units are presented, interpreted and analysed using the theory of Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive processes2. The study will inform the FIG community on how the VGGT, and land governance in general, are being addressed professional surveying education.