Cash for carbon A randomized trial of payments for ecosystem services to reduce deforestation
Seema Jayachandran,1* Joost de Laat,2 Eric F. Lambin,3,4 Charlotte Y. Stanton,5
Robin Audy,6 Nancy E. Thomas7
We evaluated a program of payments for ecosystem services in Uganda that offered forestowning households annual payments of 70,000 Ugandan shillings per hectare if they
conserved their forest. The program was implemented as a randomized controlled trial in
121 villages, 60 of which received the program for 2 years. The primary outcome was the
change in land area covered by trees, measured by classifying high-resolution satellite
imagery. We found that tree cover declined by 4.2% during the study period in treatment
villages, compared to 9.1% in control villages. We found no evidence that enrollees shifted
their deforestation to nearby land. We valued the delayed carbon dioxide emissions and
found that this program benefit is 2.4 times as large as the program costs.
