The Mission

How are these principles applied in practice?

• At heart, conservation is an issue of the human will. The only way to change the destructive behaviour of people, is to change their hearts. In partnership with church organizations and other partners, take people on nature camps to experience and get to know the Creator, with a focus on young people, the leaders of the future. Nature camps focus on making disciples of Jesus Christ and teaching them about the importance of creation care and stewardship while experiencing nature and seeing basic ecological principles for themselves.
• The vision of New Development is too big for a single organization and I will partner with organizations like the Cape Leopard Trust and others. Farmers, as the ultimate stewards of most land in the world, and business people, as the drivers of the world's economy, have to be major partners in any succesful attempt at biodiversity conservation.
• Conservancies is one practical way in which New Development will help farmers with faithful stewardship of their land. Through conservancies biodiversity corridors can be created, helping to reach the goal of half of earth being protected. In the same way conservancies can be used to formally protect the rights of indigenous people groups while simultaneously helping to to look after their land in a sustainable manner and to benefit from its biodiversity.
• The best way to convince farmers and business people to become part of the solution, is by modeling how biodiversity can increase the profitability and sustainability of their respective activities. For this purpose we will need one or more farms where sustainable methods are demonstrated to work on a commercial farm. Similarly, a number of real, for-profit software and hardware development projects will demonstrate the potential return on investment of high biodiversity.
• Biomimetics is used to find solutions to engineering (and other) problems. This consists of reverse engineering nature to find out how the ultimate Designer has solved various problems facing engineers. It demonstrates that biodiversity itself, and not just ecosystem services, is valuable.
• In addition to biomimetics, New Development also leverages indigenous local knowledge and skills (e.g. tracking used in the Farming with Predators project). Africa is one of the richest continents in the world in terms of remaining biodiversity. By using this resource to create monetary benefit, New Development can raise the perceived value of biodiversity. "Economic development" is a major threat to Africa's biodiversity. By leveraging Open Source technology and local knowledge New Development encourages a knowledge-based economy, helping Africa to leapfrog the industrialization that led to the biodiversity poverty of the "developed" world. Ultimately, a decrease in poverty usually results in lower popluation growth, and thus less danger of habitat loss.
• One of the major threats to large carnivores in particular, is human-wildlife conflict with livestock farmers. Partnering with the Cape Leopard Trust, CapeNature and others in offering a series of workshops for livestock farmers and managers dealing with livestock predation, based partly on my research in Namibia and lessons learned from farmers themselves, is an important application of Agricultural Ecology.
• Open source licenses encourage sharing of technology, leading to faster knowledge growth and a much lower barrier to entry into the high-tech world. A strong business case can be made for the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) [1] and Hardware (FOSH). I plan on starting various open source projects, both to provide affordable technology for wildlife and ecological research, and to prevent vender lock-in [2] and technology loss. If working with proprietary technology, the partner companies must provide an open API so that New Development IP will remain open source.
• New Development is committed to the biblical priciple of modeling change instead of just words and will give at least one tenth of its profits to other organizations working in the Kingdom of God (based on the biblical principle of tithing).
• To have any realistic chance of success, partners, both commercial and non-profit organizations and individuals will be needed. Funding will be done per project, so that partners can invest time or money specifically in projects that fit with their own expertise and vison.

My target clients

• The Creator: My main "client" is ultimately the Creator of heaven and earth, the one Person I wish to please above all. As humans, we exist to serve the King and his Kingdom.
• Christians: But I also serve my fellow believers, the church of Yeshua (Jesus) on earth. As part of the body of Messiah, all Christians are part of his mission on earth, including me.
• Conservation: Through continual research and developing affordable research equipment, I serve my fellow conservationists.
• Agricultural Ecology: Through workshops and training days, sharing my experience and expertise on human-wildlife conflcit mitigation, I serve both fellow conservationists and livestock farmers.
• Livestock Farmers: By partnering with farmers, we serve other farmers through research and testing, demonstrating ecologically sustainaible farming methods, and providing software tools. Of course, many (most?) South African farmers are also Christians.
• Green Technology: By demonstrating value in biodiversity for open source technology development and teaching principles of biomimetics, I serve "green" businesses, enabling them to copy and apply the same principles.
• Ordinary people: By helping to develop various income-generating technology as cost-effectively as possible, I serve normal technology users, especially those who care about the environment, by providing affordable products and services.

What value do I bring? What makes New Development services and products unique compared to so many other green tech or conservation organizations?

• I realize that to change the world, we need to change people's hearts. Changing structures or giving information is not enough. The only power strong enough to actually change people, is the Good News of the Kingdom of God being established on earth through his Holy Spirit as promised in the Bible (Isaiah 11:9).
• It is the holistic and interdisciplinary view of conservation, farming, and green technology that truly sets New Development apart. Growing up on a farm and having experienced livestock depredation myself, I can understand a farmer in the same position. Having worked in IT for many years and with good friends involved in various bsuinesses, I can understand entrepreneurs interested in green technology. Being a behavioural ecologist with a love for nature, I understand conservationists and the common frustrations when working in this field.
• In addition to this general holistic, agro-ecological approach, spending years doing research on farmer-predator conflict in Namibia, reading widely on the problem, both in published scientific articles and anecdotal evidence from popular level publications, being able to pool and compare information from multiple farmers, and working with farmers in Namibia (CCF and Naankuse) and later in the Western Cape (Cape Leopard Trust) has enabled me to build a solid level of expertise in human-wildlife conflict mitigation.
• In Namibia and now in the Western Cape, I have learned the importance of dogs in conservation, both as Livestock Guarding Dogs (e.g. Anatolian Shepherds) and for anti-poaching and tracking predators for setting monitoring cameras. I can thus support farmers in the most effective use and training of their own Livestock Guarding Dogs. I am currently training my Malinois (Jagter) for conservation work.
• Being 100% Open Source based means that even if a development project should ever fail, the intellectual property will not be lost (contrast this with what happened with the Joule IP after the hostile takeover and death of the company). Moreover, a lot of duplication is avoided by allowing others to use our designs and improve them, as long as we can use the improvements in turn. This approach has been shown to work for software that can outcompete its competitors both in terms of quality and price (e.g. Linux). By taking IP concerns out of the way, real and wide knowledge transfer actually becomes practical. (Perhaps a bit controversial, but a case can be made that this approach is also more in line with the famed African Ubuntu culture and thus a better fit for Africa).
• Through partnerships and a flexible structure, New Development will form an organic and adaptable link between Agriculture, Hi-Tech, Nature Conservation and the Christian Church.

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