Debjani Bhattacharyya wins an ERC Consolidator for her project Fair-Weather Finance: Historical Antecedents of Climate Risk Management.
This project explores why market-based tools – such as carbon trading, weather derivatives, parametric insurance, and catastrophe bonds – have become central to managing climate risk. Examining insurance archives from the eighteenth century onward, it analyzes how financial institutions shaped meteorological knowledge, risk measurement tools, underwriting policies and enforcement mechanisms. The research aims to explain how the business of risk management influenced evolving conceptions of climate and why market mechanisms, rather than regulation, dominate current climate-risk governance.
https://www.news.uzh.ch/en/articles/news/2025/erc-consolidator-grants.html