Failure to recognize land administration systems as infrastructure creates potential funding and maintenance problems. Wider economic, social, and environmental benefits of effective land administration are consequently put at risk. Land administration must be recognized as critical, public good infrastructure. An evaluation method for testing land administration as an infrastructure is developed and applied. The method utilizes tools for defining and classifying infrastructure, public goods, and critical infrastructures.

Internal territorialisation or the formalisation of forest rights has led to increased state ownership in many countries, often ignoring traditional or customary tenure and land use. Because of its roots in a formal government process, the disjuncture between formal rights and local practices may be seen as unproblematic to policymakers, even though it harms the livelihoods of marginalised forest dwellers.

Preserving large tracts of natural habitats is essential to maintain biodiversity. Nevertheless, even large areas may still suffer from less “visible” impacts such as loss of ecological processes. Because mapping ecological processes over large scales is not practical, an alternative is to map surrogate species that are key for those processes.