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Deforestation, especially in the tropics, is bad news. It contributes to climate change, but also to the degradation of biodiversity and the decrease in the quality and availability of water re-sources. Payments for forest conservation, which compensate landowners for the preservation of forest cover, have been proposed as a way to curb deforestation. Very conflicting results exist in the literature for the effectiveness of these programs, with some estimates suggesting very large impacts and high benefit cost-ratios, while other papers suggest disappointing results. Which parameters are critical for computing the climate benefits of Payments for ForestConservation Programs is also still unclear. We show that three key parameters are crucial for computing the climate benefits of Payments for Forest Conservation:additionality,perma-nenceandleakage. We run an extensive meta-analysis of the literature looking for estimates of these three parameters. We show that one key covariate reconciles the conflicting estimates of the additionality of Payments for Forest Conservation: baseline deforestation rates. The additionality of Payments for Forest Conservation is higher where deforestation pressure is large, and is lower where deforestation pressure is low. We also find evidence in favor of some permanence of effects and no evidence of leakage effects. Introducing our estimates into a benefit-cost analysis, we find that the climate benefits of forest conservation programs are higher than their costs when deforestation pressure is moderate to large.