Responsiveness of urban land administration systems in managing wetlands in the rapidly urbanizing Bujumbura city, Burundi

Wetlands are increasingly recognised as lungs for urban areas. It is observed that wetlands in urban areas around the world are encroached on and or their uses changed illegally. This happens when there are institutions and land administration systems that are supposed to manage these lands. Therefore, there is a lack of knowledge on how wetlands in highly urbanising cities are managed with the existing institutions and land administration systems. Thus, this study aims to explore how institutions and land administration systems are responsive in managing wetlands in highly urbanizing cities. A mixed research approach was applied in collecting and analysing data. The techniques for data collection included desk review, questionnaires, key informant interviews (KII), and field observations. The analysis involved the Exploratory Data Analysis approach (EDA) for quantitative data and Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) for qualitative data. The findings show that developing countries are endowed with many institutions, but fragmented, unfocused, and with overlapping powers. This makes the existing land administration system unresponsive in managing wetlands in highly urbanising cities. This triggers the encroachment and illegal change of uses of wetlands. This paper recommends that governments of developing countries establish focused institutions and coordinate stakeholders involved in land management.