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		1) This is a peer reviewed paper that has been 
		prepared and presented at the FIG Working Week in Eilat, Israel, 3-8 May 
		2009. 
		Key words: Climate Change, Carbon Credits, Land Management, 
		Land Administration. 
		SUMMARY 
		This paper explores the role of land registers and cadastre in 
		supporting measures that aim at adapting to and mitigating climate 
		change. To that end, the paper provides a brief introduction to climate 
		change in general. The paper then continues by analyzing the role of 
		housing, land use, land-use change and forestry with respect to carbon 
		storage and emission reduction. It appears that –in certain cases such 
		as a FAO/IIED report on large-scale biofuel production)– land tenure and 
		land management are of eminent importance. The paper also refers to the 
		evolving voluntary retail market for carbon credits, which even might 
		constitute a ‘title’ in their own right and be registered separately 
		from an ownership title. To promote carbon sequestration and emission 
		reduction, land policy and associated land instruments such as market 
		regulation, land use planning, land taxation and land reform should 
		include climate-proof goals. To facilitate good land policy and its 
		implementation, the paper encourages land registers and cadastres to 
		extend their traditional purposes of markets and taxation to include 
		contributing to adaptation to and mitigation of climate change.  
		1. INTRODUCTION 
		As climate change affects the livelihoods of people on earth, it is 
		most likely that land and houses will play a role in adapting to and 
		mitigating climate change. This paper first aims to use desk research to 
		identify the role of land and houses. Then, the elements of such 
		adaptation and mitigation are explored, to identify the role of land 
		owners, land users and land managers (using policy reports and 
		scientific literature). Finally, based on the author’s earlier papers 
		(see www.oicrf.org), some explorative 
		research is pursued to identify the role of land registers and cadastres 
		in adapting to and mitigating climate change. As far as the author is 
		aware, this area still represents a wide gap in our knowledge.  
		2. CLIMATE CHANGE IN GENERAL 
		The regular Synthesis Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on 
		Climate Change (IPCC) provide observations and analyses concerning (a) 
		changes in climate regardless of their causes, (b) an assessment of such 
		causes and (c) a projection of future climate change.  
		The latest report (2007) states that the fact that the climate system 
		is warming is ‘unequivocal: as is now evident from observations of 
		increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread 
		melting of snow and ice, and the rising of the global average sea 
		level’. As a rough estimate, this could result in more precipitation in 
		the north, more droughts in the south, fewer cold days, more hot days, 
		heat waves and higher sea levels. As a secondary effect, the IPCC 
		expects many natural systems to be affected, such as glacial lakes, 
		early spring events, bird migration, and shifts in plant and animal 
		species towards the polar regions, salinity and earlier greening of 
		vegetation. Various scenarios show the impact on human systems such as 
		crop productivity, coastal zones, flood plains, health, industry and 
		settlements prone to extreme weather events and drought.  
		More specifically, Africa is expected to be exposed to increased 
		water stress, reduced rain-fed agriculture, affected low-lying coastal 
		areas and diminished access to food. Asia is expected to suffer from 
		decreased availability of fresh water, higher risk for delta areas and 
		pressure on natural resources. Europe is expected to be faced with 
		floods and erosion, glacier retreat, reduced availability of water, 
		worse weather conditions in the south, and increased health risks 
		because of heat waves and wildfires. The Americas are expected to be 
		prone to gradual replacement of tropical forests by savannah, loss of 
		biodiversity, decreased livestock and crop production, less 
		precipitation, heat waves in the north and increased rain-fed 
		agriculture. Cereal productivity is expected to increase at mid and high 
		latitudes and to decrease in lower latitudes, which has a negative 
		impact on food security and the livelihoods of small farmers and 
		fisheries.  
		The drivers for climate change appear to be both natural and 
		anthropogenic. One example of a natural driver is solar radiation. 
		Anthropogenic drivers include greenhouse gas emissions from human 
		activities. The IPCC reports that the global increase of carbon dioxide 
		(CO2) is due to fossil fuel use and changes in land use. Global 
		increases in methane levels (CH4) are very likely due to agriculture and 
		fossil fuel combustion. The increase in nitrous oxide (N2O) is primarily 
		due to agriculture.  
		A special report published by the IPCC (2000) discusses how different 
		land use and forestry activities affect carbon stocks and greenhouse gas 
		emissions. Carbon is retained in live biomass, in organic matter and in 
		the soil. When human interventions lead to changes in live biomass, land 
		use and forestry, the carbon stock also changes, which in turn 
		influences the global carbon cycle. For example, the report reveals that 
		substantial amounts of carbon have been released when forests were 
		cleared. Greenhouse gas emissions occur as a result of restoration of 
		wetlands, biomass burning and fossil fuel combustion, intensive tillage, 
		fertilization of lands and forests, rice cultivation and enteric 
		fermentation. 
		3. KYOTO PROTOCOL 
		In Article 3.1 of the Kyoto Protocol, parties agreed to limit and 
		reduce their greenhouse gas emissions between 2008 and 2012. 
		Furthermore, countries that signed the Protocol can use afforestation, 
		reforestation and deforestation as potential contributors to the 
		reduction of emissions (Article 3.3). The same counts explicitly for 
		measures regarding land use, land-use change and forestry (Article 3.7). 
		This aspect is where we find the link to discuss the role of cadastres 
		in climate change, as managing lands and forests requires an active land 
		policy, instruments to implement such policy, and land tools to 
		facilitate government intervention in private and public rights to land 
		and housing.  
		4. ROLE OF LAND USE, LAND-USE CHANGE AND LAND MANAGEMENT 
		The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) states in its 
		publication ‘Climate Change and Food Production’ (2008) that sustainable 
		agricultural production plays a role in adapting to and mitigating the 
		impact of climate change, because (a) agriculture is an important 
		emitter of greenhouse gases, (b) has the highest potential for reducing 
		emissions through carbon stocks and (c) is the sector that is most 
		affected by climate change. FAO is well aware that expanding biofuel 
		production is likely to lead to greater competition for access to land. 
		This requires sound land tenure policies and land-use planning; 
		otherwise, the livelihood of farmers, pastoralists, fishermen and forest 
		dwellers without formal land tenure rights will be at risk. Greater land 
		tenure security is conditional to applying various mitigation and 
		adaptation measures.  
		A study by the International Institute for Environment and 
		Development (IIED, 2008) elaborates the relation between the two, 
		revealing that accelerating expansion of bio-ethanol and bio-diesel 
		production might offer opportunities for small-scale farmers by 
		revitalizing land use in rural areas and increasing both yields and 
		incomes. However, both would depend on land tenure security. Large-scale 
		biofuel production also might provide employment, skills development and 
		secondary industry, creating potential for long-term poverty reduction. 
		To achieve such results, the IIED advises establishing land policy 
		frameworks that give clearer definitions of concepts of idle, 
		under-utilized, barren, unproductive, degraded, abandoned and marginal 
		lands, in order to avoid land allocation to large-scale biofuel 
		industries to the disadvantage of local livelihoods. Existing land 
		tenure patterns should be recognized and implemented within a broader 
		circumstance of taxation, subsidies, markets and trade.  
		Research (e.g. Rothamsted, 2005) demonstrates that sound land 
		management results in lower greenhouse gas emissions from all links in 
		the food chain, provides carbon sequestration in soil and vegetation, 
		and replaces fossil fuels with renewable bio-energy crops. Pfister et 
		al. (2004) discuss the relations between climate change, land-use change 
		and run-off predictions in the Rhine and Meuse river basins. The 
		research concerns the influence that changes in land use had on the 
		hydrological subsystem, which interacts with the climate system. They 
		found that ‘in general field drainage, wetland loss and urbanization 
		result in more rapid downstream transmission of flood waves and less 
		floodplain storage’. There was no evidence that land-use changes 
		affected flood frequency and flood magnitude. Whether changes in the 
		hydrology of the Rhine and Meuse were more strongly influenced by 
		climate change than by land-use change appeared to be difficult to say.
		 
		Similarly, Juckem et al. (2008) investigate the effect of land-use 
		change in the ‘driftless area’ in Wisconsin. Although increased 
		precipitation was significantly higher than in other watershed areas, 
		they argue that the changes were likely linked to changes in the soil 
		properties as a result of agricultural land management practices.  
		Research by Eve et al. (2002) explains the background behind removing 
		CO2 from the climate by growing plants which are able to store organic 
		carbon in the soil. The paper shows that ‘under the US Conservation 
		Reserve Program about 13 million hectares of highly erodable croplands 
		were taken out of agricultural production by converting them, by 
		planting it back to grass or trees. Because then the soil is not 
		disturbed and biomass is not removed: the soils have shown an increase 
		in carbon storage. Also, adopting reduced tillage resulted in increased 
		soil carbon storage because the soil is less disturbed, even more for 
		no-till-at-all land use’.  
		Fertilization by using organic manure also enhances carbon storage in 
		the soil, because of both the carbon content of the manure and the 
		increase in biomass production. Eve’s paper concludes that ‘there is a 
		net effect of land use and management changes on agricultural lands 
		resulting in an increase of soil carbon storage’.  
		Cowie et al. (2007) sees potential synergies between existing 
		multilateral environmental agreements and the implementation of land-use 
		change and land management to adapt to and mitigate climate change. The 
		basic idea is that land-use change and land management can be used to 
		increase the terrestrial carbon pool, which at the same time contributes 
		to the Biodiversity Convention (CBD) and the Desertification Convention 
		(UNCCD). Measures taken into account in this study include ‘conversion 
		from conventional cropping to reduced tillage, manure, rotation, 
		irrigation, biocrops, plantation, new forests, which appear to impact on 
		both less emissions of greenhouse gases, biodiversity and 
		desertification and reforestation.’ The paper concludes that ‘good land 
		management is necessary, in order to manage forests, cropping and 
		grazing systems, biofuel production and that –when land managers 
		continue to respond to current market demands– the environmental 
		externalities are not acknowledged.’  
		The land tenure problem regarding carbon sequestration becomes 
		manifest in Unruh (2008/9). This research shows that ‘the possibility of 
		sequestering large quantities of atmospheric carbon through woody 
		biomass increment via tree planting projects in the tropics…has 
		impressive potential’. However, afforestation and reforestation projects 
		have to be initiated by governments that have often little to say in 
		areas outside the urban sphere, because the Western notion of property 
		rights and land law are often limited to those particular parts of the 
		country. In remote and rural areas, customary land management prevails 
		and is overruled by statutory land tenure arrangements. Unruh argues 
		that there are five main obstacles for such projects, namely ‘(1) the 
		land tenure disconnect between customary and statutory land rights, (2) 
		legal pluralism, (3) tree planting as land claim, (4) the functioning of 
		treed area expansion in smallholder land-use systems and (5) the 
		abandoned land problem.’ Tree planting projects require ‘improved 
		governance, which assumes single land law for the entire population’, 
		through which the land rights of customary land holders can be 
		guaranteed. Literature reveals that this is hardly a realistic way 
		forward, as governments often neglect the land rights of customary 
		peoples and the poor often ‘need to be protected against the 
		government…’ Furthermore, tree planting in Africa often ‘signifies a 
		land claim’, so that tree planting projects are perceived by local 
		communities as unfair and unjustified land claims by the government, 
		which are perceived to be conflicting with their own land rights. Unruh 
		asks, ‘given the land tenure obstacles to the afforestation and 
		reforestation approach, will it be possible to realize sequestration 
		goals within the time whereby the impact will be meaningful?’  
		Harper et al. (2007) investigates the potential of greenhouse sinks 
		to underwrite improved land management in Western Australia. The problem 
		is that Australia is faced with ‘salinization of land and water 
		resources, recurrent wind and water erosion of both cultivated 
		agricultural lands and rangeland, and the prospect of continued climate 
		change due to increases in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the 
		atmosphere.’ There might be ‘opportunities for the land management 
		sector arising from greenhouse gas abatement and in particular the 
		development of carbon sinks as a result of land use change.’ The carbon 
		storage can be used to fulfill the Kyoto obligations and opens 
		opportunities for trading in emission reductions. The research 
		investigates the possibilities of ‘carbon farming’ by planting trees and 
		shrubs on (private) farmland and de-stocking rangeland.  
		Carbon farming requires a title, which is made possible under the 
		Australian Carbon Right 2003 legislation, establishing a ‘title for the 
		carbon in a sink, separate from that of the land, which provides a legal 
		base for ownership and trading.’ These carbon credit titles are treated 
		like property titles, so they also need to be registered. Measures to 
		materialize the potential of carbon sinks include ‘reforestation, 
		grazing land management, cropland management, and re-vegetation.’  
		5. ROLE OF HOUSES AND SPATIAL PLANNING 
		According to (IPCC 2007) the largest growth in greenhouse gases 
		emissions between 1970 and 2004 has come from energy supply, transport 
		and industry. In addition to the ‘land sector’ (section 4), the urban 
		environment therefore also needs attention. ‘About 30-40% of the total 
		energy consumption in western countries is assigned to building. About 
		50% of these refer to the energy consumption for indoor air conditioning 
		(heating and cooling)’ (Pulselli et al, 2009). Regarding the effects of 
		climate change on the built environment (Roberts, 2008) clarifies that 
		buildings play an important role in both adaptation and mitigation. 
		Modern building design includes low carbon running costs while 
		‘maintaining comfort’. Super insulation, high performance windows, heat 
		recovery systems, thermal storage are to be included in climate proof 
		design principles. (Hamza et al, 2009) reports about the role of 
		building regulations in the UK, which originally were introduced to 
		safeguard public health and safety, but now -after revision- are seen as 
		a tool for ‘limiting the environmental impact of the built environment 
		on natural resources’. Regarding adaptation to the effects of climate 
		change, the construction buildings that are resistant to weather 
		extremes like flooding and storms, require not only new construction 
		methods, but also a land use planning that allocates building 
		construction at the right location (Roberts, 2008). Recognizing the role 
		of various sectors in society for finding solutions for climate change, 
		like the transportation sector, housing sector, agricultural sector, the 
		coordinating mechanism still is the spatial planning especially at local 
		level (Biesbroek et al, 2008). That explains the role of local 
		governments (or ‘sub-national governments’), as they have control over 
		‘areas that crucially affect greenhouse emissions, such as 
		transportation, energy use, land use regulation and environmental 
		education’ (Puppim, 2008). The role of spatial planning is even more 
		important as the reduction of transport related emissions has a direct 
		relationship with the higher density of land use, resulting in less 
		transport activity both for passengers and freight (Grazi et al, 2008). 
		In order to monitor the energy use, several countries introduced 
		environmental rating of buildings. As more than 80% of energy used in 
		households is dedicated to space heating, large savings are expected to 
		be gained in the housing stock. Sweden investigates an external and an 
		internal factor (Malmqvist et al, 2009), while Denmark, Belgium, the 
		Netherlands, Germany publish so called energy labels, in order to create 
		awareness amongst the populace concerning energy use of houses and 
		potential savings. That energy labeling is not a immediate success, 
		reveals an investigation in Denmark, where no significant energy saving 
		where found despite this was the main goal of the Danish Energy 
		Labelling Scheme (Kjǽrby, 2008) and an investigation by a national real 
		estate agent association (VBO) in the Netherlands, that revealed that 
		only 38% of house buyers paid attention as whether an energy label was 
		available for the property they were interested in (Dutch News, 30 
		January 2009).  
		6. MITIGATION OF AND ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGE 
		The Kyoto Protocol requires societies to respond to climate change by 
		reducing greenhouse gas emissions (‘mitigation’) and coping with the 
		changes (‘adaptation’). The IPCC report specifically summarizes various 
		options. Regarding mitigation measures related to land and housing, the 
		report suggests e.g. increased production and use of biofuels, reduction 
		of transport needs by means of climate-proof land-use planning, 
		energy-efficient houses and commercial buildings by the establishment of 
		energy labeling and building codes, land management to increase soil 
		carbon storage, restoration of degraded lands, application of 
		cultivation methods that improve carbon sequestration (such as more rice 
		cultivation, livestock and manure management), better forest management 
		and better land-use management. Regarding adaptation measures, the 
		report suggests e.g. expanded rainwater harvesting, water storage, crop 
		variety, improved land management to achieve erosion control and soil 
		protection, the construction of seawalls and storm barriers, dune 
		reinforcement, land acquisition and creation of marshlands and wetlands 
		as a buffer against sea level rise and flooding.  
		Concerning the underlying policy framework, the report refers to 
		institutional reform, land tenure and land reform, capacity building, 
		integrated land-use planning, building codes, and national water 
		policies.  
		7. CARBON CREDITS MARKET 
		Articles 3.3 and 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol provide for the use of 
		greenhouse sinks (carbon sequestration in soils and vegetation) to be 
		used by countries to fulfill their obligation to reduce greenhouse 
		gases. Articles 6, 12 and 17 establish a market for trading assigned 
		emission credits. This is known as the ‘compliance market’, structured 
		to facilitate the trade in emission rights, based on cooperation with 
		developing countries in carbon sequestration projects (‘Clean 
		Development Mechanism’). Article 17 allows countries that have ‘assigned 
		emission units’ to spare to sell their surplus credits to countries that 
		are over their targets. Since carbon dioxide is the principal greenhouse 
		gas, people speak simply of ‘trading carbon’ (UFCCC website, accessed 
		30-9-2008).  
		The Dutch government, for example, under the Clean Development 
		Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol and the EU Emission Trading Scheme 
		(EU-ETS), has a portfolio of 28 projects in 11 different countries, 
		consisting of various energy technologies such as wind power production, 
		methane gas recovery and biofuel production; the total contracted volume 
		is 17.4 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (SenterNovem website, 
		accessed 7-11-2008). The government even created a supervisory authority 
		for emissions trading: the Dutch Emissions Authority (NEA).  
		Apart from the compliance market, a ‘retail offset market has also 
		emerged, with a focus on voluntary participation by parties not bound by 
		specific caps or regulations. Greenhouse gas emissions can be offset by 
		investing in projects that provide emission reductions elsewhere; 
		critically, the voluntary market is still unregulated in that it has no 
		market standard’ (Harris, 2007).  
		Here we observe the creation of a new commodity, in line with the 
		research on land markets (Wallace et al., 2006a, 2006b), where she 
		describes that land markets increasingly include more complex 
		commodities. In the carbon credit case, this concerns a ‘new commodity 
		in the form of emission reductions or removals’.  
		This leads to opportunities for such measures as carbon farming 
		(Harper et al., 2007), to generate tradable carbon credits through –in 
		the Australian case– reduction of livestock density, removal of wild 
		grazing animals such as goats and rabbits, conversion from cropping to 
		grazing, conversion from conventional to no-till cropping, re-vegetation 
		(trees, fodder shrubs) and forestry development. In this situation, 
		marketing carbon credits requires a title for a carbon sink, which is 
		separate from the property title for the land (‘unbundling of property 
		rights’), which also might require registration.  
		To date, it is recognized that transactions in voluntary carbon 
		credits such as occur in Australia, Europe and North America are not 
		formally recorded. As cited earlier, Harris (2007) considers the 
		voluntary retail market to be unregulated; in order to increase ‘market 
		integrity and to avoid that emission rights are sold more than once, 
		formal registration should be implemented; aside from the credibility 
		gained, this registration could make the market more fungible’. It is 
		remarkable that Harris refers to existing registers such as Triodos 
		Bank’s Climate Clearinghouse register, the Greenhouse Gases Register of 
		the Environmental Resources Trust (ERT), and a register managed by the 
		Bank of New York, while existing land administration system could so 
		easily adopt such carbon credit rights in their registers.  
		8. ROLE OF LAND POLICY, LAND INSTRUMENTS AND LAND TOOLS. 
		Adaptation to and mitigation of climate change, by their very nature, 
		challenge professionals in the fields of land use, land management, land 
		reform, land tenure and land administration to incorporate climate 
		change issues into their land policies, land policy instruments and 
		facilitating land tools. This is similarly applicable to water and 
		coastal zone professionals. It is clear that land registers and 
		cadastres in themselves cannot induce mitigation and adaptation of 
		climate change. However, they must serve as a sound information base for 
		the implementation of land management policies.  
		This means that in addition to appropriate registration of land 
		tenure and cadastral geometry, additional information is requires about 
		environmental rating of buildings, energy use, current and potential 
		land use related to carbon stock potential and greenhouse gases 
		emissions, clearer definitions of various land types related to the 
		application of various legal regimes (like what is exactly ‘idle’ land), 
		flood and storm prone areas, salinization rates and transport 
		indicators. This information might not necessarily be recorded in the 
		land registration and cadastre system itself, but at least connected 
		with it, so that a strong link with private and public rights to land 
		remains in existence.  
		In the case of ‘unbundled’ property rights, with the separation of 
		carbon credit titles, these registers and cadastres should be able to 
		register such rights (registration) and to attach appropriate geometric 
		attributes (see section 10) and to make those titles accessible for 
		trade in the carbon credit market. Land registers and cadastres also 
		have to fulfill their most vital purpose, namely to provide land tenure 
		security to right holders, with a focus on the poor, the vulnerable and 
		indigenous peoples, in order to safeguard their land rights in case of 
		e.g. demands for land for purposes of large-scale biofuel production or 
		afforestation for carbon sequestration and to provide information about 
		tenure, value and use of land when governments want to encourage changes 
		in livestock, crop production, conversion from arable land to grazing 
		land, from tillage to no-tillage cropping, reforestation and combating 
		degradation of soils though sound land-use planning and management.  
		When governments want to apply taxation as a measure to achieve such 
		objectives, land registers and cadastres are supposed to provide 
		relevant information about taxable objects, taxable values and taxable 
		persons, including earlier mentioned indicators regarding energy use 
		etc.  
		When governments need lands to realize certain land use (water 
		storage, carbon sinks), land registers and cadastres should provide 
		information about right holders to be compensated in the land 
		acquisition process, in such a way that people’s land rights are 
		respected and the risk of eviction is avoided. When land reform is at 
		stake, land registers and cadastres provide information about the 
		existing land tenure pattern and provide an operational process to 
		change from old to new situations. In summary, land registers and 
		cadastres have a role to play in supporting governments and citizens in 
		their efforts at mitigating climate change and trying to adapt to its 
		impact.  
		9. THE CASE OF THE DUTCH KADASTER 
		As one of the signatory parties to the Kyoto Protocol, the 
		Netherlands’ government recognizes the urgency and scale of the global 
		climate challenge: its goal is a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas 
		emissions by 2020, relative to the benchmark year of 1990, preferably as 
		part of a European effort. In view of the fact that 50% of the land area 
		in the Netherlands is located below sea level, it is no surprise that 
		coping with the rising average seawater level, the higher run-off and 
		discharge predictions for the major rivers and extreme precipitation 
		forecasts is a priority.  
		However, the government realizes that measures to cope with water 
		management should be coupled to measures on land use, nature 
		conservation, urbanization, transport and recreation. Therefore, the 
		National Adaptation Policy is based on the concept of integrated 
		land-use planning, which combines objectives of sustainable coastal 
		defense measures, supplemented by robust river water systems, 
		sustainable cities, climate-proof buildings and climate-proof 
		agriculture.  
		Since January 1, 2008, legislation has entered into effect that 
		requires an energy label to be available at the time of transactions 
		related to the construction, sale or letting of houses. The energy label 
		issued for a specific house provides information about the energy 
		consumed during its standardized use. These energy labels form a new 
		category in the land registers. To date, the Netherlands’ Cadastre, Land 
		Registry and Mapping Agency, known as Kadaster, has registered about 
		50,000 labels. The energy labels are open for public inspection, as is 
		all cadastral data.  
		Kadaster supports the government in providing not only all 
		information about land tenure, value and use of land and houses, but 
		also about public properties and environmental limitations regarding 
		use, noise, soil pollution, nuisance. It also supports land acquisition 
		by the government in order to implement anti-flooding measures.  
		The land consolidation expertise available at Kadaster is put into 
		practice when the government aims at realizing better climate-proof 
		agricultural business structures as well as sub-catchments for river 
		water. As a consequence of sea level rise, seawater will also penetrate 
		further into the estuaries of the Rhine and Meuse, causing salt 
		intrusion leading to high salt concentrations. In this area as well, 
		Kadaster provides relevant land information to support land-based 
		anti-salinization spatial planning.  
		10. JOB OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAND SURVEYORS? 
		A study by the IPPC (2000) reveals widespread demand for a 
		well-designed carbon accounting system that provides for the 
		‘transparent, consistent, comparable, complete, accurate, verifiable and 
		efficient recording and reporting of changes in carbon stocks and/or 
		changes in greenhouse gas emissions by resources and removals by sinks 
		from applicable land use, land use change and forestry activities’. 
		Although different approaches are possible, in many cases land surface 
		areas, above-ground and below-ground volumes of biomass, canopy surveys, 
		and geoinformation play a role. The Greenhouse Office of the Australian 
		Department of Environment publishes its Full Carbon Accounting Model on 
		the web (Full CAM, assessed 13-11-2008) and also provides what is known 
		as a ‘National Carbon Accounting Toolbox and Data Viewer’ to allow land 
		managers to ensure that their projects or regional emissions accounts 
		are determined on a similar basis to Australia’s official recording of 
		emissions from the land sector.  
		The methods used for calculating carbon credits demonstrate a 
		remarkable similarity to the work of quantity surveyors, whose 
		profession it is to survey land areas and volumes to estimate building 
		and construction costs. To date, the author is unaware of any 
		publications which explore the possible extension of the surveying 
		profession towards the quantification and qualification of carbon 
		credits and emission reduction rights.  
		11. CONCLUSIONS 
		Land registers and cadastres have to extend their function beyond the 
		conventional use for land markets and land taxation. The data comprised 
		in the land information systems are also useful to facilitate government 
		policy on adapting to and mitigating climate change. Registering new 
		rights in the form of carbon credit titles would be feasible. With all 
		these aspects in mind, the idealistic concept of registers and cadastres 
		as ‘multi-purpose’ land administration systems becomes a real 
		possibility.  
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		Cotula, L., Dyer, N., Vermeulen, S., 2008, Bio-energy and Land 
		Tenure, IIED/FAO Land Tenure Technical Papers No 2 (May 2008). 
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		BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
		Paul van der Molen (59) is currently director of Kadaster 
		International, holds a chair in land administration and cadastre at the 
		International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth 
		Observation ITC in Enschede (NL). He is a former chairman of FIG 
		Commission 7 and former FIG Vice President.  
		CONTACTS 
		Prof. Paul van der Molen 
		Kadaster International 
		PO Box 9046 
		NL-7300 GH Apeldoorn 
		THE NETHERLANDS 
		E-mail: paul.vandermolen@kadaster.nl  
		
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