This autumn, two major UN conferences will bring governments, businesses, NGOs, civil society and communities together around some of the defining environmental challenges of our time: CBD COP17 in Yerevan and COP31 in Antalya.

For organisations attending either conference, preparations will already be well underway.

Meetings are being scheduled, events and side events planned, speakers confirmed, announcements prepared and communications teams tasked with finding ways to make an impact in an exceptionally busy environment.

But alongside the question of what are we doing at COP?, there is another worth asking: how is our organisation going to show up?

A strong COP communications strategy is about more than promoting your attendance or documenting what happens once you get there.

COP creates a concentrated period of global attention around climate change, biodiversity, nature, policy, finance and action. For organisations investing in being part of that conversation, the opportunity is to think about communications across the entire journey: before, during and beyond COP.

Before COP: build the story before you arrive

The conversation around CBD COP17 and COP31 will begin long before the opening plenaries. In the weeks and months beforehand, organisations will be setting out their priorities, publishing research, announcing commitments and competing for the attention of many of the same audiences.

Simply announcing that your organisation will be at COP is unlikely to be enough.

Instead, this is the moment to establish what you have to contribute to the conversation and why it matters.

What does your organisation know that could be useful? What action are you taking? What have you learned? What questions are you trying to answer? And how does your work connect to the wider climate or biodiversity conversation taking place around you?

Your pre-COP communications might include:

Thought leadership exploring the issues your organisation will bring to COP
Films or short-form content that make complex strategies more accessible
Interviews with leaders, experts, partners or people directly involved in the work
Data visualisation that turns evidence and progress into a clear story
Social content introducing the questions and themes you want to explore
Invitations and promotional content for COP events, panels, webcasts and webinars
Internal communications helping employees understand why your organisation is attending and what it hopes to achieve

The objective isn't simply to create noise before the conference. It is to establish a clear narrative that gives people a reason to pay attention when you arrive.

During COP: make the moment bigger than the room

One of the extraordinary things about COP is the concentration of people, expertise, perspectives and ideas in one place. It creates conversations and encounters that can be difficult to reproduce at any other point in the year.

It also moves incredibly quickly.

Panels happen, announcements are made, leaders speak, experts meet and conversations evolve from one day to the next. Without a plan for capturing and communicating those moments, much of their potential value can disappear as quickly as they happen.

This is where a more responsive approach to COP content becomes valuable. Rather than treating communications as a fixed list of deliverables, organisations can build the capacity to recognise and capture the stories emerging around them.

A conversation with an expert might become a short interview. A panel could be streamed as a webcast or webinar for audiences who cannot attend in person, then edited into shorter pieces of content. A significant announcement could be explained through a simple piece of visual storytelling. A daily video could help colleagues, customers or stakeholders understand what is happening on the ground and why it matters.

The aim is not necessarily to produce more. It is to identify what is worth communicating while you have access to the people, perspectives and energy that make COP unique.

For international organisations in particular, this also creates an opportunity to extend participation far beyond Yerevan or Antalya. Live streaming, webcasts, webinars, virtual participation and on-demand content can connect employees, partners and stakeholders around the world to conversations that would otherwise remain inside the conference.

Your audience for COP can be much bigger than the number of people in the room.

Beyond COP: turn two weeks into months of value

The end of COP shouldn't mean the end of your COP communications.

In fact, one of the biggest opportunities comes afterwards.

Organisations often leave major conferences with an extraordinary bank of material: keynote speeches, interviews, panel discussions, event recordings, photography, expert perspectives, data, stakeholder conversations and hours of footage. Without a plan for what happens next, much of that material can remain unused.

Thinking about content before you capture it changes this. Instead of returning from COP and asking what can we make from everything we collected?, you can arrive knowing which stories and assets are designed to have a life beyond the conference.

For example:

A 45-minute panel discussion can become a series of short expert insights
A webcast or webinar can become an on-demand resource
Interviews captured at COP can support future campaigns and thought leadership
A keynote can become articles, social content or short-form video
COP photography and footage can build a visual library for future communications
Conversations and insights gathered during the conference can inform editorial content for the months ahead

This is not about endlessly repurposing content for the sake of filling channels. It is about making the investment you have already made work harder by identifying the ideas that deserve a longer life.

Start with the story, not the deliverables

When communications teams are under pressure, it is easy for COP planning to become a production list: a film, a webcast, a panel, three interviews, ten social posts and a wrap-up video.

Those outputs may all be useful, but they are not a communications strategy.

A stronger starting point is to identify what you want your audiences to understand, remember or do differently as a result of your presence at COP. From there, you can decide which formats will communicate that story most effectively.

That might mean using:

Live events to create conversation and connection
Webcasts and webinars to extend access beyond the physical venue
Film and animation to make complex climate and biodiversity issues understandable
Short-form video to capture timely ideas and perspectives
Interviews and thought leadership to bring expertise into the wider conversation
Digital platforms and on-demand content to give communications a life beyond the event itself

When these elements are planned as part of one connected story, rather than commissioned as individual outputs, they can reinforce one another before, during and after the conference.

Three questions to ask when planning your COP communications

Whether your organisation is preparing for CBD COP17 in Yerevan or COP31 in Antalya, a useful starting point is to look beyond the event programme and consider the complete communications opportunity:

Before COP: What story do we want to establish?
What do we want to be known for, what do we genuinely have to contribute, and why should our audiences care?
During COP: Which moments are worth extending beyond the room?
Who will have access to the people and conversations that matter, and how can we capture and share them while they are relevant?
Beyond COP: How will this continue to create value?
Which ideas, conversations and assets should have a life after the conference, and can we plan for that before we start creating them?

Make every stage of COP count

Attending CBD COP17 or COP31 represents a significant investment of time, people, expertise and resources. Communications should help organisations make more of that investment, not simply document it.

The opportunity is to think about COP as a connected communications journey rather than a two-week event: building the story before you arrive, opening up the experience while you are there, and giving the most valuable ideas and conversations a meaningful life afterwards.

Because the question isn't only whether your organisation will be at COP.

It's what you will contribute to the conversation, who you will bring into it and what will remain after everyone has gone home.