Stephen Taranto

Stephen is a Virginia-born and Bolivian-by-marriage agro-ecologist specializing in conservation and development in Latin America. In 2003 he moved permanently to La Paz, Bolivia and founded La Paz on Foot, a small environmental education and eco-tourism company working throughout Central Andes region. In 2010, on the tails of his wife, Clea who works for the UN’s Climate Change and Tropical Forests program, he moved to Geneva, Switzerland for four years and worked remotely from there on projects in the Andes. In 2013 he moved to Panama where he is currently based and working both remotely and locally on conservation and development issues. He has lived and worked in Costa Rica, Panama, Bolivia and France in projects related to sustainable agriculture, forest management, community-based tourism, small business development and environmental education.

While at graduate school, he read a book called Fostering Sustainable Behavior, that describes how we can respectfully shift human behavior on larger scales toward more sustainable life-ways. This methodology had a profound impact on Stephen’s approach to conservation and development, especially in the age of accelerated and extreme climate change when we clearly we need to change our behavior in order to hold off terrible consequences (many of which have already arrived!). Designing and delivering participatory educational experiences on many topics related to sustainability has become Stephen’s specialty and he has recently been certified as a Master Environmental Educator by the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education and also has been trained as a Master Trainer of the Leave No Trace principals.