The international community aims to limit global warming to 1.5 °C, but little progress has been made towards a global, cost-efficient, and fair climate mitigation plan to deploy carbon dioxide removal (CDR) at the Paris Agreement’s scale. Here, we investigate how different CDR options—afforestation/reforestation (AR), bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), and direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS)—might be deployed to meet the Paris Agreement’s CDR objectives. We find that international cooperation in climate mitigation policy is key for deploying the most cost-efficient CDR pathway—comprised of BECCS, mainly (74%), and AR (26%)—, allowing to take the most advantage of regional bio-geophysical resources and socio-economic factors, and time variations, and therefore minimising costs.