Steven Wolf
Associate Professor, Natural Resources and the Environment

Steven Wolf teaches and conducts research on environmental governance (i.e., interplay of state and non-state actors in environmental (mis)management). His research advances critical institutional analysis applied to agriculture, forests and environmental change. Recent collaborations with students and postdoctoral researchers focus on India, China, Mexico, and USA. Current work centers on analysis of accountability relations and lack thereof.
Education
- 1996-2001, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Agricultural & Resource Economics, Univ. of California-Berkeley
- 1998-2000, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, Toulouse
- 1996, Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Environmental Studies; Land Resources
- 1991, M.A. University of Virginia; Urban and Environmental Planning; Land Use
- 1986, B.A. University of Vermont; major in English, concentration in Chemistry
Recent Research
- Sareen and S. Wolf. 2021. Accountability and sustainability transitions. Ecological Economics. 185: July. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107056
- Zhuang, H. and S. Wolf. 2021. Environmental public interest litigation: New roles for civil society organizations in environmental governance in China. Environmental Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.1897243
- Ghosh, Ritwick and S. Wolf. 2021. Environmental accounting and performances of hybrid governance. Journal of Environmental Management.
- S. Wolf. 2020. COVID-19 and medical professional: Lessons for agriculture. Agriculture & Human Value.
- Wang, P. and S. Wolf. 2019. A targeted approach to payments for ecosystem services. Global Ecology and Conservation. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2019.e00577.
- Wolf, S. and R. Ghosh. 2019. A practice-centered analysis of environmental accounting: Integrating agriculture into carbon governance. Land Use Policy (96). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.08.003
- Wolf, S., N. Kudva, A. Varghese, A. Willford, R. Stoltzfus, S. Nath, and P. Roy. 2018. Slow conservation in the Nilgiris Field Learning Center: An integrative model of education, research, and practice. Current Conservation.
Awards & Honors
President, Research Committee on Sociology of Agriculture and Food, International Sociological Association
Courses Taught
Environmental Governance, CIDA Digital Agriculture Hackathon
Contact Information
121 Fernow Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
saw44 [at] cornell.edu
Steven in the news

News
For more than 50 years, NASA and partner agencies have used satellite imagery to map agriculture worldwide with an eye toward global supply and food security. That technology, however, has largely focused on commodity and row crops. Until now...
- Cornell AgriTech
- Natural Resources and the Environment
- School of Integrative Plant Science

News
The event, held virtually March 5-7, brought together 176 students from 32 teams representing five of the world’s top agriculture schools for a 36-hour hackathon. A mix of undergraduate and graduate students in fields ranging from agriculture...
- Cornell AgriTech
- Cornell Institute for Digital Agriculture
- School of Integrative Plant Science