"As rich-nation emissions drive worsening storms and floods, the poor in Bangladesh are paying $2 billion a year from their own pockets to adapt and try to rebuild"
"KHULNA, Bangladesh - When Cyclone Yaas slammed into her home in southwest Bangladesh in May, destroying it and sweeping away in the floodwaters the small amount of cash she had saved, Amina Begum had few options.
Efforts to recover from four previous cyclones since 2009 had depleted her resources, and her husband's death five years ago left the burden of caring for their two children solely to her.
So Begum took the only option available: She sold her gold wedding earrings, her last valuable, for 5,000 taka ($58) and moved with her children to Notun Bazar, a slum in Khulna, the nearest big city.
"There was nothing else left to me," she said, standing in the narrow alleyways of her new neighbourhood, where the pungent smell of rotting food fills the air and mosquitoes torment residents at night."
Mosabber Hossain reports for Thomson Reuters Foundation December 10, 2021.
