Written by: Harsh Pati Singhania4 min readNov 12, 2026 06:20 AM IST First published on: Nov 12, 2026 at 06:20 AM ISTAfter a decade of negotiating targets, frameworks, and commitments, the question before governments at COP31 is how quickly and effectively they can deliver action. COP31 has been billed as the “implementation COP”. Its success will be judged by the investment, trade and projects that follow it.The gap between what countries have pledged and what the science requires is well documented. What deserves more attention is why that gap persists. In my conversations with business leaders across continents, the answer is rarely a lack of will. It is a lack of the conditions that turn commitment into capital: Stable policy, credible incentives, common standards, bankable projects and finance at a reasonable cost. That is the message ICC, as the official focal point for business in the UN climate process, has carried this year. Three areas will need focus.AdvertisementOne, the transition to clean energy will no longer be judged by capacity installed alone. The goal of 35 per cent electrification will depend on whether grids, connections, system design and regulation keep pace with the speed of deployment of renewable energy.Two, adaptation must become an economic priority. Public money will remain essential where resilience does not earn a commercial return. But insurers, lenders and development banks can do far more if they can measure the return on resilience. The adaptation indicators agreed at COP30 must speak the language of the real economy, with robust methodologies and usable data.The third area is finance. The New Collective Quantified Goal, adopted at COP29, commits to at least $300 billion a year by 2035, within a wider ambition of $1.3 trillion. The obstacles to drawing private capital for this purpose are fixable: Rules that make clean infrastructure lending unnecessarily expensive, multilateral development banks that crowd in too little private money for every dollar they deploy, and credit ratings that price perceived rather than actual risk in emerging markets. ICC’s Trade Register, which pools performance data from leading banks, has shown that trade and supply-chain finance carries consistently low default rates. Such evidence would let regulators and rating agencies price actual risk. Better risk data and clear targets for catalytic lending would lower the cost of capital.AdvertisementCarbon markets show the same pattern. Buyers and sellers need confidence that, if something goes wrong, a dispute can be resolved neutrally and the outcome enforced across borders. ICC’s arbitration and mediation services were designed for such cross-border transition contracts.International trade accounts for as much as 30 per cent of global emissions, yet there has been no common definition of sustainable trade. The ICC Principles for Sustainable Trade and Trade Finance give the market a standardised way to assess transactions and grade how sustainable they are. Their aim is to direct trade finance toward sustainable supply chains, and to make it easier for exporters to prove their credentials as carbon border measures spread.Through the SME Climate Hub, which ICC helped establish, many small businesses have committed to halving emissions by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050. Most businesses worldwide are small; if the transition doesn’t work for them, it will not work at all.Coming from India, I am conscious that for most developing economies, the green transition will hold only if it builds manufacturing capability and widens market access. Standards and border measures designed without developing-economy producers in mind risk becoming new barriers to trade.you may likeTechnology alone will not deliver success. Healthy ecosystems, sustainable land use and responsible resource management must be integral to the effort, and nature-based solutions deserve a far larger share of climate finance than they receive today.If governments set the conditions and business brings the capital, technology and execution, COP31 will be remembered as the moment when climate ambition finally moved to climate action.The writer is chair, International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Paris