Climate change usually brings to mind flooded towns, burning forests or heatwaves. But in a column for Prothom Alo, journalist Mosabber Hossain writes that behind that visible damage is another story: money, insurance, investment and business, and in the end who pays for the loss.

He took part in the two-day 2026 NYU Stern Climate Economics Journalism Fellowship at New York University's Stern School of Business, as a fellow of Inside Climate News, alongside 35 journalists from other countries. The discussions centred on the economics of climate change: climate finance, insurance, energy and the financial cost of biodiversity loss.

The timing mattered. At UN headquarters the high-level week of the 81st General Assembly was under way, and Climate Week, from 20 to 27 September, filled the city with more than 1,500 public and private events. On 23 September Secretary-General António Guterres convened a high-level meeting on climate action and a just transition, and the next day another high-level meeting took up the threat of sea-level rise.

Drawing on his reporting of wildfires in the United States, the writer asks what happens after the fire is out: who pays to rebuild the burned houses, whether people in high-risk areas will still be able to insure their homes, how much premiums will rise, and how small local businesses will recover.

For Bangladesh, he argues, the question is what these meetings finally deliver. Finance for adaptation, support for loss and damage, investment in clean energy and access to new technology all matter to a country so exposed to climate risk.

The views are the writer's own.

Photo: Neptuul / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Source: Prothom Alo