Charlie Wolf
Futureye Associate
Charlie Wolf is a specialist in the field of social impact assessments and has written, edited, lectured, and consulted widely in this area. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University (1963) is coorganizer and Past President of the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA), which he represented to the United Nations in New York between 1989–2000.
He was co-reorganizer of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations; co-founder of Earthrise, a center for futures research, education, and design formerly located in Providence, Rhode Island; and organizer of the Section on Environmental Sociology (now Environment and Technology) of the American Sociological Association (ASA).
Charlie has served as the Principal Investigator for the socioeconomic impact assessment of high-level nuclear waste repository siting for the Mississippi Department of Energy and Transportation and as Technical Advisor of a similar study of Hanford Site for the Washington Department of Ecology. He was also a member of the Socio-economics Panel of the National Research Council’s Committee to Review the Mineral Management Service’s Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Studies Program.
He has been affiliated with the U.S. Army Engineer Institute for Water Resources and, as AAAS Fellow, with the Office of Technology Assessment, Congress of the United States. He was director of research for the Sociopolitical Resource Group of the Risk/Impact Panel, Committee on Nuclear and Alternative Energy Systems (CONAES), National Academy of Sciences, and later of the Social Science Research Council study for the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island
(the Kemeny Commission).
Charlie has taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Brown University, Dalhousie University, City University of New York Graduate Center, University of Wisconsin at Madison, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Polytechnic Institute (now University) of New York, and the Federal University of Technology, Yola (Nigeria), where he served as Acting Director of Academic Planning and Coordinator of the School of Management Science.
In 1985 he received the ASA Section on Environmental Sociology’s Distinguished Service Award. In the fall of 1993 he was the Winifred and Atherton Bean Distinguished Visiting Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Carleton College, and Visiting Professor of Environmental Studies at Ramapo College of New Jersey in the spring of 1995. In 1997 he received the IAIA’s Rose-Hulman Award for distinguished contributions to the field of impact assessment. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is also a chief of the Ijaw people of Okutukutu and Etegwe communities, Bayelsa State, Nigeria, and of the Urhobo people of the Ughelli Kingdom, Delta State.
Charlie is editor of a volume on Population, Environment and Development in Tanzania for the Population Division, United Nations Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis; and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reports on Poverty Assessment in Yemen and Combating Poverty: The Korean Experience. His writing projects in progress include: Technology and the Moral Order: A Minnesota Meditation; Social Impact Assessment; The Compleat Assessor; Comparing Regions: Applying Lessons Learned to Niger Delta Development; Sustainable Korea; and Connections: A World Impact Atlas.
From 1992–2008 he served as a Public Member on the Environment Committee of Community Planning Board #2 (Manhattan); his avocation is urban forestry.
Charlie is also a co-founder of the Isipingo Island Institute, a community based organization located near Durban, South Africa for environmental conservation, social welfare, and economic development; and co-director of the Niger Delta Project to promote “equity, prosperity, and tranquility” in the Niger River Delta region of Nigeria. In 2005–2006 he was Principal Investigator of an environmental and social risk assessment for the Lake Chad Basin Commission and Global Environment Facility.