Regulating the Unthinkable: Climate Interventions as a Test Case for Risk Governance

As the risk of climate overshoot grows, attention increasingly turns to climate interventions, such as Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), that is, technologies designed to actively alter the climate system beyond conventional mitigation and adaptation. The article addresses questions of institutional legitimacy and recognition justice, the implications of international legal fragmentation, competing approaches to risk analysis, the application of precautionary and prevention principles, market governance of CDR, the role of intellectual property regimes, and regional perspectives. The most striking tension centres on how risks should be analysed and compared. Climate intervention governance does not exist in a vacuum. Still, it is an emerging field shaped by partial institutional coverage, normative contestation, and private-sector acceleration against a background of limited public salience. This article situates climate intervention governance within broader debates on risk regulation. Building on and critically synthesizing the contributions published in the European Journal of Risk Regulation’s Special Issue devoted to the governance challenges posed by SRM and CDR, the article identifies cross-cutting themes that will shape governance debates in the coming years. It concludes that climate intervention governance is ultimately a test case for contemporary risk analysis and regulation, as well as collective self-governance, under conditions of radical uncertainty.