Property Rights, Climate Displacement, and Household Welfare: Evidence from Kenya’s Rising Lakes

Kenya’s Rift Valley lakes have expanded dramatically since 2010, permanently submerging land and displacing over 80,000 households across a mix of formal, customary, and informal tenure systems. This project tests how pre-existing tenure status shapes compensation receipt, pre-displacement adaptation investment, and livelihood recovery under slow-onset environmental displacement. The empirical design combines satellite-derived annual lake boundaries (Landsat and Sentinel-2, 2005–2025) for Lakes Baringo, Bogoria, and Naivasha with a planned household survey of displaced and near-displaced households, exploiting variation in displacement timing, distance to the expanding shoreline, and tenure type. Companion theory paper: Groundless Claims: Property Rights When Land Ceases to Exist.