The Cadastral System as an Engine of Municipality to Spread the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract The decentralisation of administrative power has been accepted as a more efficient system of managing their population in their own territories. Broadly speaking, almost all governmental and non-governmental organisations are converging on the need to transfer increasingly autonomous, endogenous, and autotrophic powers or functions to localities. Although locations are closer to people and problems, they have fewer resources, whether financial, human, or technological, which makes it difficult to obtain data and consequently make decisions. Several reasons allow the decision to be taken under political principles or others that are more difficult to legitimise. Cadastral purposes have historically been related to tax policy or taxes levied on real estate. In recent studies, it has been published that the cadastre is not only useful for taxation and real estate taxation but may also be useful for interventions that government authorities define for urban and rural development. In this paper, we address the relationships between these topics, namely, the municipalisation of some functions of the State, the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) and the bases for correct decision-making based on useful information obtained by cadastral strategies. The methodology uses Gastil's theoretical model applied to cadastral system, Latour's Actor-Network Theory, and the concepts of citizen participation and open government to validate the cadastre as an interesting component for the implementation of collective initiatives aligned with the SDG. The results show that public policies need to be legitimised in the eyes of citizens and that in their eyes it is not enough just to improve the quality of their results, it is necessary to legitimise them from their conception, planning, and implementation.