Jayachandran, S., de Laat, J., Lambin, E.F., Stanton, C.Y., Audy, R. and Thomas, N.E. (2017). “Cash for carbon: A randomized trial of payments for ecosystem services to reduce deforestation.” Science 357(6348): 267–273. Working paper version: NBER Working Paper 22378 (2016).
A randomized controlled trial run from 2011 to 2013 in Hoima and Kibaale districts, Uganda, in which a conservation trust paid private forest owners UGX 70,000 per hectare per year to keep forest standing. Tree cover loss fell in treatment villages. About a third of eligible owners enrolled. The working paper reports no appreciable effect on consumption: the payments “offset this income loss but did not, on net, enrich them.” The program is a forest program, and the wiki cites it as a comparator: the strongest causal evidence available on what inclusion in a payment program does to household welfare.