$350m to leave oil in the ground

Country asks developed world to pay it not to pump - and avoid further pollution of the Amazon rainforest.

Long before you reach the site the jungle changes. Birds and insects fall quiet, streams turn inky and trees become stunted, their leaves blackened and scrunched up, like fists.

The trail turns wider and muddier, for vehicles come here, and there is an unfamiliar sound, a sort of whooshing, followed by crackling.

And then you see it: fire dancing over the tree tops. The flames seem to lick the canopy in great billowing tongues, as if the Amazon were burning.

It is a trick of perspective. As you get closer you see that the blaze comes from a 15-metre (50ft) metal tower in the middle of a clearing and that it shoots the flames skyward in controlled bursts. It is a technique to burn waste gas, one of countless flares dotted across the forests of eastern Ecuador, and it is a stark display of the extraction of oil from the lush heart of South America.