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

Abstract As the risk of climate overshoot grows, attention increasingly turns to climate interventions, 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 revolves around the question of how risks should be analysed and compared. Climate intervention governance does not exist in a vacuum but 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 synthesising the contributions published in the European Journal of Risk Regulation’s Special Issue devoted to the governance challenges posed by Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (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 and collective self-governance, under conditions of radical uncertainty.