Forest Trends and ACT Brazil have just published a report that looks at how the Paiter-Surui indigenous people came to give their Free, Prior and Informed Consent to the Surui carbon project. According to the abstract:

"This project represents a promising and innovative scenario in the Amazon, because it is designed to enhance environmental conservation and the sustainable use of natural resources, while ensuring financial resources for effective management of indigenous lands and maintaining the ethnic culture of the people that inhabit them."

New satellite images document the withering effect of the 2010 drought on Amazon forests. Both Mongabay and the American Geophysical Union quote Liang Xu of Boston University, the lead author of an upcoming study based on these images:

"The greenness levels of Amazonian vegetation -- a measure of its health -- decreased dramatically over an area more than three and one-half times the size of Texas and did not recover to normal levels, even after the drought ended in late October 2010."