About Us

Initiative

Independent Impact is an initiative of the Nova Institute, an independent not for profit company founded in 1994 and based in South Africa. Nova’s vision is the well-being of households, especially low-income households, in Southern Africa. Nova works in a transdisciplinary way with a broad group of stakeholders including, households, community structures, governments, NGOs, and businesses to develop and implement practical solutions to improve quality of life.

Impact quantification has been a core part of Nova’s work since its inception. Nova has pioneered methodologies for quantifying the impacts of household interventions on greenhouse gas emission, air pollution exposure and quality of live.

Team

The core functionality of Independent Impact is being built as by a team from the Nova Institute, with support from a independent collaborators. As the platform matures and the reputation system becomes active in different parts of the platform, we will explore with more decentralised governance models.

Team

Christiaan Pauw

Nova Institute Director & Independent Impact Lead

Alex Howard

Independent developer & Data Engineer, Jellyfish Technologies

Tshepo Sotiya

Software Developer, Nova Institute

Montagu Murray

SCEO, Nova Institute

Jade Jacobsohn

Director, Impact Out

Tertius Murray

CFO, Nova Institute

History

Independent Impact grows from a decade of experimentation in verifiable impact accounting. Highlights include:

Aartum Whitepaper

The Aartum Whitepaper articulated the vision that unique cryptographic representations of verified communal benefits could function as symbols of value, while calling out veracity as the central challenge for blockchain-based impact ecosystems.

AIAO Ontology

The Antropogenic Impact Accounting Ontology (AIAO) resulted from collaborative work in the Hyperledger Climate Action and Accounting SIG to define a foundational ontology for anthropogenic impact accounting, enabling comparison across methodologies and metrics. The Standards Working Group of the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust continues to steward four related ontologies:

• Antropogenic Impact Accounting Ontology
• Impact Ontology
• Claim Ontology
• Information Communication Ontology

These ontologies provide the formal basis for Independent Impact an make it possible to do imopact accounting across different impacts and domains in a consistent manner.

Guardian cookstove methodology

This methodology demonstrates how rigorous methodologies can be executed within open verification workflows. Explore the methodology in practice through our cookstove case study video. Our exeprience

Adaptation methodology

The extends the platform beyond mitigation use cases. A worked example with real project data is available in the Adaptation Methodology reference.

• Publication of AIAO – formal release of the ontology to the wider community in September 2025, establishing shared language for anthropogenic impact.