The global fight against tropical deforestation is at a critical juncture, with soft commodities like cocoa and timber driving persistent forest loss despite decades of conservation efforts. As consumption hubs in the Global North enact trade legislation aimed at deforestation-free supply chains, it is critical to understand the interplay between demand-side due diligence and existing supply-side policies (e.g., payments for ecosystem services, land tenure reform) in commodity-exporting nations. This is particularly salient given the recent setbacks that due diligence legislation has faced due to poor uptake in producer countries. Using a policy sequencing framework, we explore whether strategic alignment of external/demand-side and bottom-up/supply-side measures can enhance policy uptake and landscape-level outcomes for tropical forests, as well as for national sovereignty. Drawing on empirical analysis of Ghana’s agriculture and forest sectors from 2010 to 2022, with a particular focus on cocoa and timber, we assess how the introduction, timing, and overlap of policy instruments and actor coalitions may reshape power dynamics and incentivize sustainable practices. The analysis demonstrates the potential of Ghana’s Living Income Differential (LID) in 2019 — a bold move to reclaim commodity pricing power — and Ghana’s bottom-up approach to national traceability systems for cocoa and timber, which allow for state-led legality verification to accompany (or replace) corporate-led compliance verification. Our findings contribute to the broader governance discourse by highlighting timing and content as critical levers for policy effectiveness. By identifying entry points and scaling mechanisms, we offer practical guidance for harmonizing global and local policy instruments and initiatives to drive systemic change in deforestation-linked supply chains.
