Rev. Dr. Martin Poulsom is a Trustee and Board Member of Operation Noah, the UK’s only ecumenical Christian charity focused exclusively on the climate crisis. His role in the organisation is to act as a link between the small team of employees, running Operation Noah’s main campaign, Bright Now, and the Board of Trustees. In this role, he meets regularly with the Team as a whole, line manages the Campaign Director, and is a member of the Officers Group of the charity.
In the past few years, Operation Noah has developed its work to inspire action on the climate crisis. It was previously best known for its divestment campaign, which encouraged church investors to divest from fossil fuels on moral and religious grounds. Its work was recognised in 2022 when it was runner-up for the prestigious Sheila McKechnie “David & Goliath” Award, and its ‘40 Days, 40 Dioceses’ campaign in Lent 2023 led to a number of Church of England and Roman Catholic dioceses divesting, ahead of the Church of England divesting at a national level in June 2023. Operation Noah’s involvement in this process led to it being named Campaign of the Year 2024 by the Sheila McKechnie Foundation, in its 20th Anniversary year.
Martin co-edited two Reports in the Autumn of 2022, ‘Church Land and the Climate Crisis: A Call to Action’ and ‘Church Investment in Climate Solutions’. Following on from these reports, he assisted in the planning of the ‘Financing a Liveable Future’ Conference in the Autumn of 2023, which was co-hosted by Operation Noah and Faith Invest. He played a part in the development of materials to support Operation Noah’s Green Investment Declaration, launched in the summer of 2024, and was one of the speakers at the Catholic Green Investment Roundtable in Spring 2025. Alongside these development on climate-related impact investing, Operation Noah also developed focused resources on the three asks of the Land Use campaign, on growing trees, protecting peat and supporting farmers to reduce emissions, produced between Autumn 2024 and early 2025.
Martin’s climate activism has also led him to act as an Operation Noah representative at larger events, which have gathered people of faith in common action on climate. In the Spring of 2023, he helped to plan the Service that was held before the ‘No Faith in Fossil Fuels’ Pilgrimage, which took place as part of The Big One, organised by a much wider group. At the start of Lent 2024, he was involved in planning the service before a ‘No Faith in Fossil Fuels’ 10-day vigil outside the Houses of Parliament, in which he also took part, praying for the UK Government to stop issuing new licenses for fossil fuel in UK waters. In 2025, he helped to plan the service before a ‘No Faith in Fossil Fuels’ Ash Wednesday 24 hour vigil outside the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, praying for an end to the exploration for oil and gas in the North Sea. In the run-up to the COP29 climate talks in 2024, he also took part in the CAFOD Spare Change for Climate Change action outside the head offices of Shell and BP, calling on them to contribute to the UN Loss and Damage Fund.