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The climate conversation is changing. Here’s what I heard during NY Climate Week 2026.

October 8, 2026

There is no shortage of conversation about climate change nowadays, especially during Climate Week in New York. For five intense days every September, climate is the center of conversation on stages and along sidewalks. It is acknowledged as central to planning in finance, policy, technology, health, cities, food, travel and in almost every sector from Broadway to the Boardroom.

As we planned FINN Partners’ third annual Climate & Sustainability Leadership Forum with 1BusinessWorld, one question guided my thinking: “How can we make this gathering useful when so much is already being said about climate and sustainability?”

After helping bring together 29 conversations and more than 50 leaders from around the world, I came away thinking that perhaps our role is not necessarily to add more voices, but to create the conditions for different voices to gather. Some of the most interesting ideas I heard came from a designer thinking about the choices made before a product ever exists, public officials working to ensure municipal fleets are carbon neutral, health leaders connecting planetary and human health, conservationists making the case for forests, and experts examining food waste, regenerative agriculture, mental health, AI and wildfire response.

Individually, these are very different conversations. Together, they left me with the sense that the climate conversation itself is changing. Here are five ideas I took away.

1. Sustainability is becoming part of how we do business, not a separate conversation

One of the things I found most encouraging throughout the Forum was how rarely sustainability was discussed as a standalone function. Instead, it surfaced naturally in conversations about how we design products, move people, manufacture goods, grow food, manage supply chains and invest capital. Sustainability increasingly feels less like something an organization commits to alongside its business strategy and more like something embedded within the decisions the business makes every day.

For years, much of the public conversation has understandably centered on commitments, targets, disclosures and long-term ambitions. Those still matter, but what I heard at the Forum was greater attention to the harder work of implementation: the materials that go into a product, how it is manufactured and transported, and what happens to it at the end of its useful life.

I thought about this during my conversation with Lisa Gralnek of iF DESIGN. By the time a product reaches a consumer, countless decisions have already been made about the materials used in its construction, its ability to be repaired or reused and the resources required for manufacturing. Similar ideas emerged in conversations about circularity, mobility, food waste and supply chains. For me, they pointed toward a future in which sustainability is less a separate strategy and integrated into what is necessary to make a good business and product decision.

2. Resilience is no longer a conversation about the future

The conversations about resilience felt particularly personal to me. I grew up in Greece, and my family is deeply rooted to the country. Like so many people across the Mediterranean, I have watched summers change during the years as extreme heat and wildfires have become an increasingly familiar part of the season.

A few years ago, that reality came frighteningly close to home when a wildfire nearly reached our family home. We were fortunate not to lose it, but not long afterward came flooding, a stark reminder of how one climate event can leave the landscape more vulnerable to the next risk.

Experiences like that change the way you hear conversations about adaptation. Reducing emissions remains essential, but for millions of people, climate change is no longer something we are preparing for in the abstract. It is already affecting homes and communities, infrastructure, food and water systems and, increasingly, our communal sense of safety and stability.

Throughout the Forum, we heard how technology can extend the reach of first responders confronting wildfires, how finance can help communities prepare for climate shocks, and how leaders in fragile and conflict-affected regions are navigating environmental and social instability. We also explored the mental health consequences of repeated disruption and uncertainty. Together, these conversations reinforced that resilience is as much about people as it is about infrastructure: how communities prepare, recover and regain a sense of security when what once felt exceptional begins to feel increasingly possible.

3. Human health and planetary health are becoming impossible to separate

The relationship between climate and health also connected strongly because so much of my work at FINN sits at the intersection of health and purpose. We tend to describe climate change first as an environmental crisis, but the air we breathe, the buildings where we spend our days, the food systems we depend on and the temperatures our bodies experience all shape our health.

Rachel Hodgdon, CEO of the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) explored this connection through the built environment, while Benoît Miribel and I looked more broadly at the interdependence of human, animal and environmental health through One Sustainable Health. Both conversations reinforced something I increasingly believe we organize these challenges into sectors and disciplines, but people do not experience them that way.

Most of us experience climate much closer to home, through our health, our families and the places where we live. That creates an opportunity to make climate action more relevant by showing how deeply it is connected to things people already care about: their wellbeing, their quality of life and the communities they call home.

4. Innovation does not always mean inventing something new

AI, electrification and emerging technologies naturally featured throughout the Forum, including fascinating examples of technology extending the reach of first responders during wildfires. But I appreciated that innovation was not treated as synonymous with technology.

Some of the most compelling ideas were remarkably straightforward: protecting roadless forests, reducing food waste, designing products to last longer, regenerating natural systems and making sustainable transportation easier to choose. They reminded me that progress does not always depend on inventing something new. Sometimes the bigger challenge is taking something we already know works and making it possible at scale.

Rather than always searching for the next breakthrough, we should also be asking what prevents good solutions from becoming widespread ones. The answer may be technology, but it may just as easily be cost, policy, infrastructure, behavior or communication. Removing those barriers can be every bit as important as developing something new.

5. We need to make climate leadership feel relevant to people’s lives

As a communicator, this may be the thread I returned to most often. We have developed an increasingly sophisticated vocabulary around climate and sustainability — net zero, Scope 3, ESG, transition finance, circularity, decarbonization — and while precision matters, I sometimes wonder whether our language has also made the conversation harder for people to enter.

Across discussions about tourism, consumer behavior, agriculture, mobility and health, I heard a common theme: people are more likely to engage when they understand where they fit. A traveler can connect with protecting a place they love. An employee can understand how a corporate commitment changes the decisions they make at work. A consumer can make a better choice when it is accessible, affordable and intuitive.

For communicators, our responsibility is not to dilute the science, but to translate complexity without losing its meaning. The strongest climate stories make progress tangible. They show what has actually changed (a product redesigned, a community made more resilient, a healthier building created or a forest protected) and help people see how they can be part of that change.

From climate conversation to climate participation

By the end of the Forum, I found myself feeling more optimistic than I had expected. Not because any of these conversations minimized the scale of the challenge, but because they showed just how much the circle of people who have a role in addressing it has expanded.

We heard from designers, health leaders, investors, manufacturers, conservationists, technologists and people working across tourism, agriculture, mobility and the built environment. They approached climate from very different starting points, but together they challenged the idea that climate leadership belongs primarily to climate experts. There are more entry points into this work than we sometimes recognize.

There is also a responsibility that comes with convening these conversations. At FINN, when we create a platform for leaders to talk about what needs to change, we inevitably invite the same questions of ourselves. I think that accountability is healthy. None of us needs to pretend to have all the answers, but we should be willing to examine our own choices, listen to perspectives outside our usual circles and be honest about where ambition still needs to become action.

After listening to 29 sessions – conversations – I did not leave with a neat answer to the climate crisis, nor would I trust any one answer if I had. What I did leave with was a stronger sense that climate is becoming inseparable from conversations about health, business, technology, design, food, travel and the communities in which we live. The opportunity now is to help people see that climate and sustainability already shape their lives and that their decisions can shape what happens next.