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WITHIN a decade, says Peru’s prime minister, Jorge del Castillo, his country will be a net exporter of energy. While other Latin American governments are tightening the screws on foreign investment in oil and gas, Peru is courting it. It has opened up swathes of the country to exploration, and is encouraging the $1 billion modernisation of a state-run oil refinery and the construction of an export terminal for a huge liquefied natural gas project, which would be the biggest investment in Peruvian history.

Alan Garcia, Peru’s president, dreams of a petrochemical industry that will attract at least $3 billion and create thousands of jobs by mid-2011, when he leaves office. But campaigners for the environment and for indigenous peoples are not so enthusiastic. They believe the rush to develop Peru’s oil and gas jeopardises both the Amazon and coast, and the welfare of some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens. …

FROM the top of the 30m-tall viewing platform at Posada Amazonas, a thatched 30-bed tourist lodge in the Peruvian Amazon, immense trees?some more than a millennium in age?extend to the horizon. It seems an untroubled Eden. But below the canopy, danger lurks in the shape of a new paved highway.

Peru’s Madre de Dios region has been undergoing an ecotourism boom. More than 70 ?eco-lodges? cater to tourists from around the world, eager to experience a few days in the Amazon. Last year more than 60,000 foreigners visited the area, a 20-fold increase over 15 years. …

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LAST week, EDF, one of the world’s biggest energy firms, announced it would invest $50m in a firm called Nanosolar, which aims to produce cheap solar panels. Nanosolar believes it can sell panels for a little as $1 for each watt of capacity?less than one-third of the best deals currently on offer. If true, that?s great news, especially since it would reverse a worrying trend.

It used to be an axiom that solar power grew steadily cheaper as time passed. Solar panels were once too expensive to install on anything but satellites. But as the technology improved, they became cost-effective, first in isolated spots such as weather stations and oilrigs, and later on lonely farms and houses far from the grid. …

LONG before you reach Akalu-Olu village, in Nigeria’s oil-rich Delta region, a metres-high flame of gas gives the place away. Solomon Odum’s farm is close by. When he was a child, the land grew more than enough cassavas and yams to feed his family. ?Now you could plant from here to the school across town and not have enough,? he says. Half a century after oil exploration began, communities across the Niger Delta region say the environment and the livelihoods that relied upon it are permanently damaged.

Gas flares like the one burning in Akalu-Olu may well contribute more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere than any other source in sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria flares more than any country after Russia: 20 billion cubic metres a year out of a global total of 150 billion. For years oil companies have flared the gas to separate it from the lucrative crude oil. Lacking facilities to harness the gas or a market to sell it, flaring made good business sense, even if it damaged the atmosphere. But flaring not only continues to pollute horribly, it is also wasteful. The gas that is wasted could earn the country more than $500m a year. …