Managing Director (MD)
Dr Christiaan J Pauw holds a BA, BA Honours and a BD degree from the University of Pretoria, all with distinction. He received a DD degree in 2006 from the same university. Before joining Nova on a full time basis, he was involved in various projects for the Dutch Reformed Church, the Willem Nicol Education Trust and the Christian Social Council in the fields of socio-economic research, education, food security and economic development in low-income communities.
Christiaan did his first work for Nova in 1998 and joined full-time in 2001. He worked on numerous studies, pilot projects and full-scale implementations related to housing and domestic energy and environmental health. After 2007 he played a leading role in Nova’s implementation of the alternative top-down ignition technique in four provinces. This included the development and registration of a Voluntary Gold Standard methodology for the quantification of greenhouse gas emission reductions from the alternative ignition technique resulting in the generation of verified emission reductions of more than 200000 tCO2eq. He is a key contributor to a number of ongoing projects in the field of climate change mitigation, food security, water benefit credits and air pollution offsets.
Christiaan leads Nova’s Information Business Unit and is a skilled data-analyst and competent programmer in the R language. He gained extensive experience in designing and conducting household surveys and contributing to the development of a number of instruments to measure quality of life in the household context. He has a specific interest in using cryptography and distrusted ledger technology to create systems for quantification, verification and tokenisation of environmental and social benefits. Christiaan lives in near Mossel Bay with his wife Jeanette, a lecturer and statistical consultant. They have three children. He enjoys music (from J.S. Bach to Miles Davis to Sigur Ros) and plays classical guitar and bass. He also enjoys ocean sports like stand-up paddling and swimming.
