Lawyers, Land Rights and Disaster Recovery

Underscoring the need for land rights in the aftermath (not to mention during the recovery) of a natural disaster from Marginal Revolution:

Haiti right now has a massive scarcity of land -- in the legally usable sense -- and is facing a massive recalculation problem as a result. Keep in mind that in relative terms, land is a more important part of the Haitian economy than almost anywhere else. After food, land is arguably the most important market in the Haitian economy and that has ceased to work.

As much as it might sometimes pain me to say this (some times more than others), lawyers can indeed play an important role in development. One of sad truths of extreme poverty is that it's self inflicted by bad governments and compounded by bad policies.