What’s COP got to do with it? Key signals and what they mean for businesses

Just like Tina Turner, the business community could be forgiven for thinking ‘What’s COP got to do with it?’ For CSOs, the answer is: quite a lot actually, just not in the way many imagine. COP doesn’t (and can’t) deliver perfect blueprints for company-level strategy. Instead, it issues signals, directional nudges, norms evolution and emerging guardrails. Our job is to read them, assess them, and translate them into actionable strategies based on how we expect the landscape to evolve.

As COP30 approaches in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025, the stakes are higher than ever. This summit is being framed not as a negotiation marathon but as a decisive pivot: “If Paris was the COP of international agreement; Belém is the time of implementation,” to paraphrase André Correa do Lago, President of COP30.