Emma Latham Phillips

Freelance storyteller and project manager

United Kingdom

I'm a climate journalist, storyteller and project manager whose work bridges environmental justice, culture and place. I amplify the voices and knowledge of those who hold an interconnected understanding of our place on Earth, championing reverence for land and the communities reconnecting and regenerating it.

I have words in Vogue Business, Condé Nast Traveller, SUITCASE, VICE and Tribune UK, among others, and have produced climate content for clients including TOAST, SUGi, Allbirds, Bupa and Earthrise Studio, including co-project managing the Choose Earth 2023 campaign with Choose Love and Voo da Vespa.

My writing spans climate journalism, travel writing and creative non-fiction, from COP30 in Belém and Amazonian voices to the tradition-keepers of Estonia's Kihnu island and Crete's slow food pioneers. From 2023-25, I project managed a cross-cultural support network with Indigenous leaders across Brazil at The Roddick Foundation.

My work is rooted in the belief that storytelling can transform how we relate to each other and other lifeforms on Earth.

Want to connect? Email me at [email protected]

Portfolio
CN Traveller
2026
From Cornwall to the Amazon: how a cross-cultural love story expanded my sense of home

A Valentine's Day love story about what it means to build a life across cultures. Invited by Condé Nast Traveller to write about my relationship with Amazonian academic, translator and curator Jamille Pinheiro Dias, ours is a journey rooted in a trip down the Rio Negro through Anavilhanas and Jaú National Park, but stretching far beyond. A story about building bridges between biomes, the Amazon rainforest and Cornwall's Celtic rainforests, love as exchange and expansion, the fear and elation...

Earthrise Studio x Bupa
2025
Planet Health Stories

Created the accompanying copy for Planet Health Stories campaign, a 12-part film series exploring the inseparable bond between human and planetary health. Collaborating with 12 creatives, the series examines hope, movement, access to nature, mental health and community. The way we move, eat, breathe, live and connect is interconnected with the natural world. When we understand and protect this connection, we can begin to protect the Earth, our health, and the health of future generations.

Vogue
2025
The Fashion Exec's Guide to COP30

A 3,000+ word deep dive into what the UN climate summit in the Amazon means for the global fashion industry. Unpacking the structural inequalities facing Brazil's local fashion sector, the controversial road to COP30, what international brands can learn from Amazonian designers and Indigenous regenerative pathways, and the climate agenda that will shape fashion's future.

Earthrise Studio x Amazon Watch
2025
Does Corporate Sponsorship Compromise COP30?

An investigation into the corporations with major environmental liabilities fronting COP30 through infrastructure investments, cultural sponsorships and political lobbying. Amplifying the voices of Indigenous and traditional communities exposing the contradiction: companies profiting from extraction while marketing themselves as climate champions. Reached over 1 million people.

Earthrise Studio
2025
COP 30 Coverage: Amazonian Voices

Written for Earthrise Studio's 300,000+ community ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil - the first UN climate conference held in the Amazon. I interviewed select Indigenous leaders, quilombola activists and forest defenders on what's at stake as Amazonian peoples unite against fossil fuel expansion, territory invasions and climate inaction. A piece centring the voices of those whose survival depends on these negotiations, and who already hold the regenerative solutions within their cultures.

Earthrise Studio x Choose Love x Voo da Vespa
2023
Choose Earth Campaign 2023

Campaign project manager and writer for Choose Earth 2023, a collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communicators and activists amplifying attention and raising funds for Brazilian Indigenous resistance. The campaign spotlights the interconnected violences facing Indigenous communities - from land invasion to cultural genocide - and makes the case that Indigenous justice is environmental justice. Where Indigenous people are, ecosystems flourish. A partnership between Earthrise...

SUITCASE Magazine
2023
Meet The People Reviving Crete's Traditional Food Culture

From a food archaeologist recreating ancient dishes from Aristotle's writings to Ntounias, a wood-fired slow-food taverna deep in the mountains, I met the Cretan farmers, foragers and producers proving that self-sufficiency was always about integrity. A story about ancient farming traditions, slow food pioneers, and the fight against culinary homogeneity.

SUITCASE Magazine
2022
Survival Skills

On the tiny Baltic island of Kihnu, women have run things for centuries, tending the land, leading rituals and weaving a UNESCO-protected culture while their men worked at sea. I met the tradition-keepers preserving this way of life, from handicraft masters knitting by candlelight to elders salting herring in centuries-old storerooms. A story about self-sufficiency, ceremony, and a living culture fighting to remain its own.

SUITCASE, The Flavour Issue
2022
Nature's Table

The Travel Project and I visited four UK outdoor dining experiences that bring guests directly to where their ingredients are grown, reared, hunted, fished and foraged. We’ve come to know food as what lines the supermarket shelves, but what we eat is inextricably tied to the land. When you can no longer see that link, you lose sight of how our landscapes are being used to produce the food we love. These four UK ventures are repairing this broken bond, reconnecting people to nature and each...

Earthrise Studio x Allbirds
2022
Allrise

What role can storytelling play in the climate movement? And how can we use our imaginations to shape a better world? Earthrise Studio commissioned me to tackle these questions and more in a limited edition newspaper made in partnership Allbirds. Storytelling is a powerful tool that can help us reframe our relationship with Mother Nature. In Allrise, I share the stories of how Allbirds Allgood Collective members are harnessing creativity, imagination and storytelling for good.

TOAST
2022
Dried Flower Decorations with Angela Maynard | Time to Make

An interview with dried flower florist Angela Maynard, who swapped the fashion industry for foraged blooms on Hackney Marshes. We talk sustainable floristry, the beauty of decay, and why make-do-and-mend is a creative philosophy. A step-by-step guide to crafting a dried flower wall hanging accompanies the piece.

Sugiproject
2022
Urban Forests can Help Cities Adapt to the Impacts of Climate Change - SUGi

As extreme weather events become more frequent, the effect of the climate crisis on our cities is becoming increasingly clear - our urban spaces have not been designed to cope. Green space is being lost to buildings, pavements and patios, and these impermeable surfaces are worsening the impact of heavy rainfall and heatwaves.

Lodestars Anthology, The Spain Issue
2022
A Play Unfolding

For Lodestars Anthology, I joined a team of carefree “cowboys” on a three-day riding experience through Andalucia’s Sierra Norte de Sevilla. The days felt as if they were ripped from a book. We traversed the trails that tied together the National Park, winding between olive and almond groves. As we rode through the hills, lunches would appear in the landscape as if a curtain had been pulled back, and we spent the night at Taramona, a part-ruined farmhouse aglow with candlelight. I was...

Thames and Hudson
2022
Running Wild

Like The Wind Magazine commissioned me to write a chapter on the trails that crisscross the Sierra Norte mountains in Oaxaca for their book Running Wild. Running Wild is published by Thames and Hudson and contains a collection of 16 of the world’s most scenic running trails. A different runner-come-writer brings each route to life, showcasing how running is not simply about journeying through a beautiful landscape but about connecting with a place.

More or Less, Issue 5
2021
Playing Dirty

For More or Less Issue 5, the photographer Sophie Green and I dive headfirst into a miraculous substance the West constantly undervalues – mud. Our story pushes back against the idea that you can only find treatments in doctor’s offices and on massage tables. “Therapy” is an exploration of the restorative power of nature, in nature. Peloid treatments can be traced back to the days of Cleopatra. Today, you can find mud-seeking pilgrims wallowing in the visceral volcanic baths of South...

The Lissome, Rewilding Issue
2021
Reclaiming The Sacred

For The Lissome, I went on a meandering journey into modern-day witchcraft and herbalism. Most people have forgotten that the origins of modern medicine lie in plants. But plants, medicine and spirituality have always been intertwined. In ancient cultures, medicine and religion were so closely interrelated that it was impossible to disentangle them. Considering how much plants do for us, treating them with reverence and ritual makes sense.

TOAST
2021
Investing in Nature and Restoring Biodiversity with SUGi Forest Makers

I wrote about SUGi for Toast’s Rewilding Season. SUGi collaborates with a global network of forest makers to build biodiversity and regenerate urban areas by planting pocket forests worldwide using The Miyawaki Method. You can go out into the wilderness or bring the wild to you, and the Miyawaki Method enables biodiverse forests to be grown in spaces as small as 3sqm. SUGi’s mission is to transform the concrete jungle from grey to green, and they’re bringing the forest to the...

Bloom, Issue 10
2021
Fringe Benefits

For Bloom Issue 10, the photographer Marco Kesseler and I explore the ancient and dying art of hedge laying. Hedgerows are more than simply bits on the side; they’re vital habitats for wildlife, provide countless ecosystem services and are as synonymous with British culture as fish and chips. Yet 250,000 miles of hedgerow are at risk in the UK today. I chat with Jonty Williams from The Husbandry School and hedgerow manager Nigel Adams about what we can do to conserve them. “You’re...

Sugiproject
2021
Children need nature to thrive - SUGi

Planting forests in schools can improve the mental and physical wellbeing of students. SUGi partners with schools across the globe to plant pocket forests closer to the classroom, bringing biodiversity back to playgrounds and nature back into school curriculums from Scotland to Australia. There is mounting evidence that children need a relationship with nature to thrive.

Sugiproject
2022
What is biodiversity - SUGi

Biodiversity is the term given to describe the amazing array of different lifeforms that you can find on Earth or in a given place or habitat at a moment in time, from animals to plants, fungi to other microorganisms. You need biodiversity or 'the biological variation of life' for an ecosystem to flourish because it's precisely this mix of species in a particular environment that creates an ecosystem in the first place.

Sugiproject
2021
Forests are social - SUGi

"The forest is a highly connected place, where the vitality of trees depends on the strength and attunement of their physical relationship with other trees and creatures," writes Professor Suzanne Simard. Over recent decades, modern science has caught up with indigenous intelligence to discover that plants aren't distinct entities, as previously believed, but part of interconnected and intelligent communities.

Lodestars Anthology
2022
The Bothy Revolution

Since 2020, I have been departing on a series of environmentally-minded staycations to establish a more sustainable relationship with travel. For Lodestars Anthology, I visited Inverlonan – a place reimagining the Scottish bothy tradition. While you don’t need to carry home comforts in on your back, Inverlonan still enables you to retreat from the modern world’s fast pace. If you want a hot shower, the kettle needs boiling, and if you’re craving a feast of local provisions, you need to...

Vice
2020
The Battle to Save the UK's Ancient Woodland from a High Speed Train

For VICE, I spoke with the activists, campaigners, locals and wildlife experts defending the UK’s ancient woodland against HS2. We often believe that ecocide is happening everywhere other than in the UK. However, environmental destruction can be found in our backyard. The Wildlife Trust reports that 796 important wildlife sites are at risk from HS2’s construction. Yet designing a railway line and protecting the environment shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.

Tribune
2020
Green Spaces for All

For many, the pandemic provided an opportunity to enjoy green spaces. But it also revealed that access to nature is unequal in Britain, from gardens to parks and the privatised countryside. In the UK, access to nature is currently reserved for the wealthy and white. Research reveals that white households are 4 x more likely than black households to have a garden and balcony. Some 11 million people are living in nature deprived neighbourhoods. I explored this environmental injustice for...

Huck Magazine
2020
Britain is in a food crisis - and it's only getting worse

The coronavirus pandemic saw millions of people go hungry. In response, local social eating spaces stepped up where the government failed, and we witnessed the strength and necessity of community resilience. For Huck, I spoke to activists and those struggling with food poverty about our need for a National Food Service – the mass reintroduction of affordable public eating spaces that are community-supported and community-run. These spaces tackle food and income insecurity, reduce food...

Suitcase Magazine
2020
The Magic of Mushrooms: Foraging and Forest Feasting in Sussex | SUITCASE Magazine

To many in the UK, fungi are the stuff of fairy tales, associated with witchcraft or psychedelics. Embarking on a mushroom-foraging expedition and tucking into a wild forest feast in rural Sussex, I provide SUITCASE with a taste of Britain's untapped culinary landscape and have a wild feast between the trees.

Life & Thyme
2020
Smallhold Encourages Grow-Your-Own Mushrooms - Life & Thyme

Smallhold, NYC's only organic mushroom farm, was founded on the principle that consumers should expect more from food-it should be local, organic and fresh. Typically, Smallhold is a wholesaler, building and operating miniature mushroom farms and selling quality produce to retailers and restaurants. But when Covid-19 shut down restaurants, the company had to adapt. Smallhold began selling direct-to-consumer mushroom kits, causing a grow-your-own food craze across the city.

Screen Shot
2020
Now, more than ever, we must acknowledge the importance of medicinal mushrooms

You heard it here first (or maybe third): mushrooms are having a moment. Once vilified across the UK and USA, these countries are now waking up to a potential other cultures have known about for years. For SCREENSHOT, I explore how this magical kingdom can protect our health. I speak with the citizen scientist and mushroom cultivator, William Padilla-Brown and paediatrician Dr Cornelia Cho, asking how, if we use mushrooms to prevent and cure ill-health, can we sell them ethically.

Lodestars Anthology, The Wales Issue
2020
At One With Nature

Three Pools is a farm that uses permaculture design to work with nature, prioritise sustainability and care for others. The farm hosts food-centred events that celebrate community to support a regenerative model. I was the first to experience a private outdoor five-course feast made from home-grown and reared ingredients. Agriculture is the one sector that can transform from emitting CO2 to sequestering CO2. Regenerative farms like Three Pools can reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, build...

METAL, What Is Real Issue
2020
Thinking Forward: Can Digital Fashion Fix the Industry’s Eco-Problem?

In this issue, I asked whether digital fashion could help solve the industry’s eco problem, speaking to industry pioneers such as The Fabricant and Catty Tay, founder of the Institute of Digital Fashion. If done correctly, digital fashion could be a force of good simply by allowing the item to exist digitally without being made in real life. Digital fashion can be used to reduce waste, enable ready-to-wear garment production, remove the likelihood of returns and create a new kind of...

IFLA
2021
Earthships and the Future of Self-Sufficient Housing

Imagine a world where you didn’t have to pay water or electricity bills and weren’t reliant on power plants? Michael Reynolds has realised precisely that through a unique architecture practice. Fifty years ago, Michael Reynolds revolutionised the building model to create homes that protect humans and the Earth; he coined them Earthships. Earthships harness natural phenomena, like the sun, wind and rain, for free, enabling humans to live autonomously, self-sufficiently and off-grid.

The Earth Issue, A Dream of Tomorrow
2020
A Tree of Forty Different Fruits

In response to the rise in monocultures and lack of genetic diversity in our crops, Sam Van Aken has created a tree that bears 40 different fruits. This artwork acts as modern Noah’s Ark – vessels for near-extinct heirloom varieties once crucial to a specific area but now lost. The Tree of 40 Fruits is an act of conservation. “But if you do not call it art, you lose the metaphor within it. Our world problems won’t be solved through practical measures. We need to think on a large scale,...

Sustainweb
2020
Reconnect with your urban landscape through foraging | Jellied Eel

Our cities hold abundant resources; there is food everywhere if you know what to look for. I explore the world of urban foraging, with a few pointers on why, where and how you can start to explore this practice within the city. One positive thing that we can take from this pandemic is that it's encouraging many to re-evaluate their relationship with nature.

Culture Trip
2020
Going Green: The Organisations Transforming London's Urban Spaces

As a new decade begins, the population has awakened to a looming climate crisis. It's no longer enough to trudge between towering skyrises and fluorescent offices. For those Londoners who want to help shape a greener city, these four organisations have transformed once concrete landscapes into eco-friendly gardens.

Culture Trip
2020
The Projects Cleaning Up London's Waterways For Aquatic Wildlife

Nearly half of London is green. However, winding between the concrete streets is a blue (or brownish) habitat often written off – water. Humans like to forget about what they cannot see, using London’s waterways as dumping grounds. However, a clean freshwater habitat is essential for the health and wellbeing of the planet, us and ecosystems. I spotlight four conservation projects whose work is seeing kingfishers, shrimp, reed warblers, and seals return to London’s waterways.

Lodestars Anthology
2020
Slow Living with Settle - Lodestars Anthology

For many, travel means transporting from one site to the next. You get more ticks for the fewer hours spent in your hotel room. However, at Settle, you cannot help but slow down. Located on parkland that once formed part of the neighbouring Norfolk estate, Settle consists of several painstakingly restored railway carriages and a cabin dotted at a distance beside several lakes. Joanna Morfoot has designed the interiors in a way that makes you want to stay curled up reading for days on...

SUITCASE, The Cities Issue
2019
Destination Inspiration, Arcosanti

Jutting out of the rocks like a martian Acropolis, Arcosanti is a prototype for acology – a fusion of architecture and ecology. This micro-city was dreamt up by the late Italian architect Paolo Soleri and is based on an experimental model that reimagines urban sprawl, excessive consumption and ecological disconnect.

Lodestars Anthology, The Mexico Issue
2020
Natural Beauty

Located close to Puerto Escondido, Casa Wabi is an art foundation established by the Mexican artist Bosco Sodi. The organisation aims to bring art to those who can’t easily access it, and artists in residence build a dialogue with the local communities that goes beyond words. For Lodestars Anthology, I travelled to Casa Wabi and stayed at Punta Pajaros. Both sites have been designed to have a minimal impact on their environment and celebrate the symbiosis between buildings and landscape.

SUITCASE, The Health Issue
2020
The Essence of Running

I joined Aire Libre on a running experience from Oaxaca City to The Sierra Norte Mountains during la Día de los Muertos. Aire Libre takes running from the city and puts it back in its natural habitat – the wild. Running is used as a medium to reconnect with the local culture. We learnt from the Zapotec people about their rituals, craft and culinary traditions and how they honour those who have passed. In the Sierra Norte Mountains, we spent three days running between the mist-covered villages...