Despite the recognition that restoration is increasingly needed for the recovery and resilience of ecosystems given climate change, the existing regulatory and policy frameworks are not entirely suitable to effectively evaluate restoration, and will be even more challenging to assess the more novel interventions being proposed. To aid in alleviating the uncertainty around how to regulate these, we reviewed 154 publications on the governance of marine and coral reef restoration, conservation interventions and emerging technologies governance. Our goal was to synthesise the regulatory recommendations proposed by the literature in order to understand how they can be applied to more emerging conservation interventions. We identified six key guiding principles which can help guide decision-makers when incorporating actions which may have uncertain and incomplete knowledge of potential risks and benefits. The principles include recommendations and examples in practice of meaningful engagement, adaptive and future-facing policy that can identify and quickly respond to changing conditions and how novel risks may be better addressed. While this study focused on coral reef governance, the principles discussed may also apply broadly to many conservation interventions.