As negotiators gather in Antalya, LRQA CEO Ian Spaulding argues that business should judge this COP on one question: what can be proven?
Earlier this year, I wrote that we are operating in a global economy where trade is used as a weapon, alliances are strained and verified data has become the currency of trust. As negotiators arrive in Antalya for COP31, that same reality is reshaping climate action. Many businesses haven’t yet caught up with what it means.
For most of the past decade, companies treated climate as a matter of reputation. You set a target, published a report and answered to investors and campaigners. That era is ending. Climate requirements are now being written into the rules that decide who can sell what, and where.
The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) now puts a carbon cost on imports of steel, cement, aluminium, fertiliser and more. Deforestation rules require food and commodity companies to prove where their products came from. Each of these is, in practice, a trade rule. To keep market access, a company has to show, with data someone else can check, how its products were made.
With the midterm elections just behind us, much of the attention is on Washington. But some of the most immediate changes for business are coming from the states. On 10 November, while negotiators meet in Antalya, the largest companies doing business in California must file their first emissions reports under the state’s new climate disclosure law. From next year, those figures will need independent assurance, a sign that momentum on climate accountability in the US is building again.
That’s why I’d encourage business leaders to watch COP31 differently. The headline commitments matter less than the question underneath them: can it be proven?
The gap between pledges and proof
The record so far should give us pause. Three years after countries pledged at COP28 to triple nuclear capacity by 2050, the global fleet is roughly where it was. Carbon markets have shown both the promise and the danger: credits built on weak verification lost their value, and the companies that relied on them found their own claims exposed.
Sooner or later, every pledge gets tested by someone with the power to check it: a regulator, an investor or a customer.
The risks haven’t changed, even where the politics have
I’m often asked whether climate still matters to business when so much else is competing for leaders’ attention. My answer is that the underlying risks are the same as ever, and in many places they are growing.
A farmer in the Midwest, running on margins of a few percent, feels a spike in diesel and fertiliser prices whether or not anyone calls it a climate issue. An energy company planning an asset that will run for 40 years needs to know which fuels and technologies will still be investable at the end of it. A food brand selling into Europe needs traceability whatever its home market demands.
Food and energy are where this plays out most sharply, and they are tied together. Both systems still run largely on fossil inputs, which makes them exposed to the same price shocks and the same supply disruptions. Increasingly, decarbonisation is how these sectors protect themselves from volatility, not a cost they carry for the sake of a target.
What COP31 should deliver
If I could ask negotiators for three things, they would be these.
First, rules that stay put. Businesses invest years ahead of regulation. When governments delay or reverse course, that investment is stranded and the next call to act is met with hesitation.
Second, common standards for counting carbon. Fragmented methods add cost for every company operating across borders, and they leave room for claims no one can compare.
Third, treat verification as infrastructure. Capital flows to what can be measured. Credible, independent assurance is what turns a commitment into something investors, regulators and customers will back.
What business should do now
Companies don’t need to wait for the outcome in Antalya. They can map where climate rules already touch their market access, build data they would be willing to defend in front of a regulator or a customer, and treat that data as a commercial asset rather than a compliance cost.
Over the next fortnight, LRQA and our expert colleagues at EcoEngineers, an LRQA company, will look at COP31’s themes through that lens, from food and agriculture to energy, finance and technology. We’ll be asking the same question of every announcement: what can be proven?
