Implementing Land Value Capture and Taxation to Finance the SDGs and the Habitat Agenda

This event will focus upon practical issues and best practices available for implementing viable land based municipal finance policies as identified in the UN-Habitat’s founding document of 1976, carried forward with UN Habitat II's Action Agenda of 1996 and developed in the various issue papers, meetings,and declarations leading up to the Quito conference. We will show the steps that are required to implement such policies in nations where economic development is at an early stage and where it is highly advanced using site specific examples of each in order to: Ensure secure and affordable tenure of the space needed by all urban dwellers in order to live well, earn their living, develop and realise their physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual potential and contribute to the like wellbeing of all in their community. Collect for the whole community the economic value that, as community, it itself creates and manifests in land value. Ensure that each individual within the community is enabled to retain the economic value of what they earn. Secure consent and support from critical sections of the community through public education strategies that include the publishing of reliable, credible and transparent information and maps regarding the value, permitted and actual use, of every plot of urban land within the community’s domain. Ensure that the community created basis of public revenue is not diminished by the actions of government, public or private sectors of the economy Reduce the scope for corruption and abuse by those whose existing pecuniary interests would lead them to oppose the measures required. We will demonstrate how integrating land use and land value based fiscal policies constitute an essential component of practical solutions to economic, social, environmental, housing, employment, development, inequity and poverty problems.