By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent

By painting the mountains, Eduardo Gold hopes to replicate the effect of Andean glaciers, which reflect back sunlight and hence heat back through the atmosphere.

The technique is scientifically plausible and, according to some scientists, may be the only method of lowering global temperatures in a crisis. “A white surface reflects the sun’s rays back through the atmosphere and into space, in doing so it cools the area around it too,” said the 55-year-old activist. “In effect in creates a micro-climate, so we can say that the cold generates more cold, just as heat generates more heat.”

It is hoped the project will slow the melting of the glaciers.

Four workmen have been given the task of painting three peaks, starting with Peru’s Chalon Sombrero peak, which lies 4,756 metres above sea level.

Chalon Sombrero, like many of the Andean peaks, has seen its glacier disappear within living memory.

The painters who have already completed two hectares of a planned 70 have been recruited from Licapa village, which depends on the run-off from the mountain for its water.

The project is a low technology remedy for global warming. The workers use an environmentally-friendly mix of lime, industrial egg white and water, which is known to have been used since Peru’s colonial times

The whitewash is slopped out on the slopes from jugs.

If the underlying theory, which is known as Solar Radiation Management, works the glacier should re-emerge in a cooler micro-climate.

The 135,000 pound project is funded by the World Bank after Mr Gold won a “100 Ideas to Save the Planet” competition last year.

The World Bank last year estimated that 22 per cent of Peru’s glaciers have melted since 1980 and there are projections that all the country’s glaciers could disappear in the next 20 years.

While novel the painting scheme is not the only outlandish way of tackling global warming proposed. Firing mirrors into space to reflect the sun’s rays, or feeding cattle garlic to reduce methane emissions have been mooted.

Locals who have witnessed the destruction of the glaciers are strong supporters of Mr Gold’s scheme. “All the peaks here should be painted in this way,” said Pablo Parco Palomino. “That way there would be as much water as there was before the glacier disappeared, and that would mean more pasture to support more livestock.”

But Antonio Brack, Peru’s Environment Minister, told the World Bank that its funding would be better spent on other “projects which would have more impact in mitigating climate change.”

He said: “It’s nonsense.”

Mr Gold believes he can put the theory into practice and get results. “I’d rather try and fail to find a solution than start working out how we are going to survive without the glaciers, as if the situation was irreversible,”

Steven Chu, the US Energy Secretary, has endorsed installation of white roofs to help prevent climate change, an idea seen as more logistically feasible than painting mountain peaks.