OPERATION NOAH, a pressure group set up in 2001 by Churches Together in Britain and Ireland and Christian Ecology Link (CEL), is running short of cash. It could lose its director, Mark Dowd, and its head of campaigning, Ann Pettifor, in November, unless it can find more money quickly, Mr Dowd said on Monday.
“The next board meeting is on 17 September, and big decisions will have to be taken then,” he said. “The Archbishop of Canterbury’s lecture in Southwark Cathedral could be our swan song.”
The Archbishop is to speak in Southwark Cathedral on the “The climate crisis: a Christian response” on 13 October, in the run-up to the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen. “It would be ironic if we shut down just as this crucial global meeting is about to take place,” Mr Dowd declared.
The Archbishop’s lecture, which would cost between £6000 and £7000 to stage, was being part-sponsored by an individual well-wisher, he said. Ms Pettifor was unlikely to continue in post unless new fund-ing became available.
“We are a single-issue campaign to keep climate change as high profile in the public eye. We need about £100,000 a year to pay our small staff, for publicity, and to maintain our website. We have got between £40,000 and £50,000 left.”
Attempts to raise money from grant-making charities had failed. “A lot of charities are finding the same thing,” Mr Dowd said. “Operation Noah won’t cease to exist, but Ann and I won’t be able to stay with the organisation after November. It will be up to the board to decide what to do next.”
Barbara Echolin, secretary of CEL, which initially developed the idea of Operation Noah, said on Monday that Mr Dowd and Ms Pettifor had done “a magnificent job in awareness-raising and pressure on government over the past few years. It would be a real tragedy if they had to cease now.”
With the Copenhagen conference imminent, “we need Operation Noah like never before. More people need to realise this, and put their money where their heart is,” Ms Echolin said. “The future of life as we know it is in the balance.”
CEL last week challenged the Government’s decision not to bail out the Vestas wind-turbine plant on the Isle of Wight, even though it had given billions of pounds to help car-manufacturing.
It did not make sense for the Government not to support the plant when it was “promising more green jobs in the renewable energy revolution,” Ruth Jarman, a member of CEL’s steering committee, said.