The Amazon rainforest, in the western world at least, is synonymous with Brazil. In reality this green behemoth transcends national boundaries to also encompass vast tracts of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. It is in the last of these Andean nations that one of the fiercest and most lopsided battles for the future of the Amazon is being waged; that of a coalition of indigenous, human rights and ecological groups against the petroleum giants of the Camisea gas project.

Driven by escalating oil and gas prices and pressure to pay off foreign debt, the Amazon is shuddering under the advance of large-scale hydrocarbon extraction. The Camisea development is the biggest ever foreign investment project in Peru's history; presented by the Peruvian government at its inception as "the contract of the century", environmental groups call it simply "the last place on earth" to drill for fossil fuels. Proven reserves of 13.4 trillion cubic feet have ensured that access to the Camisea gas field, first discovered by Shell in south-eastern Peru in the mid-1980s, has remained a priority for Peru's government and its foreign backers in spite of the very real concerns of an environmental apocalypse.

California-based NGO, E-Tech International, publish exhaustive records of the gas leaks, deforestation and soil erosion caused by the first phase of pipe building. They present a litany of errors that makes even harder reading given the context; a swathe of carbon-rich virgin rainforest, home to bewildering biodiversity and previously uncontacted indigenous groups.

Though climatologists are distancing themselves from models that identify the Amazon as a significant carbon sink, based on the capacity of trees to absorb and store carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, deforestation is still cited as one of the key contributors to rising carbon emissions. The science is simple; keep the trees in the ground and the carbon dioxide stays safely locked-in. The Amazon rainforest also finds itself on the frontline of climate change science in an altogether less passive sense. If scientists can discover an enzyme that turns simple plant matter, cellulose, into ethanol in an affordable, one-stage process, carbon neutral bio-fuels can trump petrol on the forecourts and become our secret weapon in the battle against climate change. With its wealth of largely unstudied plant-eating insect life, the Amazon has become a key research arena in the quest for this Holy Grail.

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