A New Taxonomy of Climate Interventions: Card Activity

Overview

Objectives

By participating fully in this activity, students will learn how to:

• Describe climate interventions by where they begin in the Earth system: the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, geosphere, built environment, or outer space
• Trace how an intervention is mediated through Earth-system processes to its intended impacts and its co-impacts
• Compare interventions by their scale of deployment and by where uncertainty and unintended consequences arise
• Discuss who has agency over an intervention and what can and cannot be influenced

Grade Level

Grades 9-12, Undergraduate

Standards

These are Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) performance expectations.

• HS-ESS3-4 — Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.
• HS-ESS2-2 — Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth’s surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.

This lesson also supports these international frameworks:

• Global competence (Asia Society and OECD): Investigate the world; Recognize perspectives
• UNESCO learning objectives for SDG 13 (Climate Action):
  • Cognitive 5: prevention, mitigation and adaptation strategies
  • Socio-emotional 1: explaining ecosystem dynamics and the impacts of climate change
  • Behavioural 3: assessing the impact of decisions on other people and world regions

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

• SDG 13 — Climate Action: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
• SDG 15 — Life on Land: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

Materials Required

• The Climate Intervention Futures Initiative taxonomy cards (75 cards, printed, one set per group)
• The taxonomy spreadsheet, which gives each card’s text
• Large paper and markers for mapping

Learning Sequence

Lesson Plan Introduction

Climate interventions are often discussed as machines or products. The African Tech Futures Lab developed this taxonomy to show them instead as actions that start somewhere in the Earth system, are carried through Earth-system processes, and lead to a range of intended and unintended outcomes. The cards are a way into conversations that connect the science and governance of climate intervention.

Activity Details

1. Interventions as Earth-System Processes

• Introduce the taxonomy’s framing: each intervention has a sphere where it begins, a scale of deployment, an Earth-system mediation (the physical, chemical, biological, or ecological pathway through which it acts), and impacts, one of which is its primary intended impact.
• Show one card, such as marine cloud brightening or rewilding, and trace it through these four parts together.

2. Sort the Cards

• Give each group a card set and ask them to sort it before looking at the spheres printed on the cards: which interventions belong together, and why?
• Compare their groupings with the taxonomy’s seven spheres: atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, geosphere, anthroposphere (built environment), and exosphere (outer space and near space).
• Discussion question: Which interventions surprised you by their sphere, and does where an intervention begins change how you think about it?

3. Trace Intended and Unintended Outcomes

• Each group chooses three cards from different spheres, including at least one solar radiation modification intervention such as stratospheric aerosol injection, and maps each one from its starting point, through its Earth-system mediation, to its intended impact and its co-impacts.
• Groups mark where uncertainty enters the chain and where unintended consequences could emerge.

4. Agency and Uncertainty

• Groups present their maps. For each intervention, discuss who would have agency to carry it out, what can and cannot be influenced once it begins, and how its scale of deployment affects who is affected.
• Discussion question: Is it more useful to think of these interventions as technologies or as Earth-system processes? What changes when you choose one view?

Conclusion

Close with a reflective question: Which intervention would you most want to understand better before anyone decides to use it, and what would you need to know?

Global Connections

Needs review: Claude drafted the Global Connections section, and the global competence and UNESCO SDG 13 entries under Standards, from the lesson materials. Review and edit them.

Start where you teach

Ask each group to write a new card for an intervention, natural process or traditional land or water practice from where they live, and place it in the taxonomy.

Bring in other perspectives

The taxonomy was developed by the African Tech Futures Lab. Discuss how describing interventions as Earth-system processes, rather than as technologies, changes who is seen as having expertise and a say.

Share beyond the classroom

Groups can display their maps for the school, or share photos of them with another class and compare where each placed the same cards.

Lesson materials

Download the files below to teach this lesson. PDFs are accessible versions; PowerPoint and Excel files can be edited for your class.

Teacher resources

• Climate intervention taxonomy cards

  Needs review: The taxonomy spreadsheet states a CC BY 4.0 licence, but ATFL's web pages don't mention one. Confirm with Trisha Patel that the cards and spreadsheet can be shared here under CC BY 4.0.

  The 75 cards as image files, organized by sphere, for printing. The taxonomy spreadsheet has the same text in accessible form. Patel, T., Tamble, G., Seddon, J., and Mutiso, R. M. (2026), A New Taxonomy of Climate Interventions, Version 1.0, African Tech Futures Lab, CC BY 4.0.

  • Download ZIP: Climate intervention taxonomy cards

• Climate intervention taxonomy spreadsheet

  Every intervention's sphere, description, scale of deployment, Earth-system mediation, and impacts, with a reference list. Patel, T., Tamble, G., Seddon, J., and Mutiso, R. M. (2026), A New Taxonomy of Climate Interventions, Version 1.0, African Tech Futures Lab, CC BY 4.0.

  • Download Excel: Climate intervention taxonomy spreadsheet

• A New Taxonomy of Climate Interventions

  The African Tech Futures Lab page introducing the taxonomy and cards.

  • Open Link: A New Taxonomy of Climate Interventions

Credit and contact