Co-founder, Director and Principal: Conservation and Ecology
Stephan is a co-founder and director of ECC and its Principal for Conservation and Ecology. He is a registered Lead Practitioner with EAPAN and has 13 years of experience in ecology, rehabilitation, rangeland management and environmental assessment. Since 2016 he has led more than 100 projects across mining, energy, infrastructure, agriculture, conservation and tourism.
Much of his work is in mining. He brings the ecology and land-use perspective into ESIAs, closure planning and the management of social risk. He has managed resettlement and livelihood restoration planning for a gold mining project, and has advised landowners on legacy mining contamination, rehabilitation scope and the costing of rehabilitation work. His approach is to deal with ecological and rehabilitation risk early, in the assessment, so that it does not become a liability at closure.
Rehabilitation and ecology run through all of his work. His postgraduate research measured how bush clearing affects vegetation and soil in Namibia’s central savannah, and he co-authored a paper on the ecological side effects of chemical and mechanical bush clearing in the South African Journal of Botany (2015). He applies this to rangeland restoration, conservation planning for private and communal land, biodiversity baselines and the management of invasive species.
He has particular depth in Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification. He co-authored the draft FSC National Forest Stewardship Standard for Namibia and leads ECC’s work as FSC group scheme manager for certified operations across the country.
Before co-founding ECC, he managed environmental compliance on the 375 km Sasol and ROMPCO natural gas pipeline in Mozambique with WorleyParsons, then worked as an environmental practitioner with Savannah Environmental in South Africa’s Northern Cape.
He serves on the Executive Committee of the Namibian Chamber of Environment and on the Board of the Charcoal Association of Namibia. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Development and Environment from Stellenbosch University and a Postgraduate Degree (Hons) in Environmental Analysis and Management from the University of Pretoria.