Independent Impact logo Independent Impact

Our Story

Meet the people and history behind Independent Impact, and learn why we are building reputation-led impact accounting.

Independent Impact is a Nova Institute initiative that pairs decades of impact quantification experience with a new, transparent digital infrastructure. Follow the links below to learn why the platform exists, how it grew from early experiments, and who is building it today.

Team

Team

Christiaan Pauw

Christiaan Pauw

Nova Institute Director & Independent Impact Lead

Alex Howard

Alex Howard

Independent Developer & Data Engineer, Jellyfish Technologies

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Why Independent Impact

The problem we saw

Traditional impact reporting and verification systems are slow, expensive, and monopolised, placing heavy financial and technical barriers in front of smaller or locally rooted initiatives. Verifiers often lack local knowledge, and methodologies can be limited or misaligned with the real issues. The result is a system that rewards scale over integrity, privileges middle-men over households, and leaves impact claims difficult to compare, trust, or verify.

The approach we are taking

Independent Impact aims to turn this model on its head using two principles: everything should be transparent and everything can be evaluated.

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Nova’s Impact Journey

Independent Impact is an initiative of the Nova Institute, an independent not-for-profit company based in South Africa with a track record spanning three decades. Nova’s vision is the well-being of households—especially low-income households—in Southern Africa. Nova works in a transdisciplinary way with households, community structures, governments, NGOs, and businesses to develop and implement practical solutions that improve quality of life.

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

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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.

Anthropogenic Impact Accounting Ontology

The Anthropogenic 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:

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