How blockchain-based digitization of land records can boost financial inclusion in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is the densest territorial state worldwide with 165 million people living on an area as small as New York State. In addition, Bangladesh is highly affected by climate change and flooding, making land scarce and highly demanded. Land disputes account for 70% of court cases nationwide, and may take 20+ years for resolution since proof of property ownership is highly bureaucratic and the land management system prone to errors. The government is committed to reform the sector and has recently started digitizing land records. Digiland is running a pilot project in collaboration with the Bangladesh government, on the feasibility of blockchain-based distributed ledgers (DLT) for providing title authenticity, as well as trusted and standardised procedures for proving property ownership. Following up on the pilot’s experience, the long-term goal of this project is to exploit/explore?? a valuable opportunity to foster financial inclusion and access to credit, with cascading effects on socio-economic equality, while contributing to the land registry reform. A trustworthy, DLT-supported land registry may enable a potential credit market of collateral-bearing, verifiable land owners. However, a number of challenges must still be addressed to ensure that land titles on blockchain can become the single sources of truth, legally-binding, and palatable for the banking system of the country to be accepted as evidence of ownership, allowing citizens to apply for mortgages and other financial services for land development. This project will assess the necessary legal, economical and technological steps to enable such transformation, and will develop a sandboxed pilot study on the ground. Building on the ongoing collaboration, Phase 1 will recruit institutional and banking stakeholders, and a cohort of final users in Bangladesh. Technology implications and requirements will be investigated with the research partner, and a plan for the Phase 2 pilot will be developed.