Governing Cocoa in the Shadow of the EU Deforestation Regulation: Polycentric Compliance in Ghana’s Cocoa-Forest Landscape

The EU's Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) represents the most ambitious attempt to govern global supply chains through market access rules. Sub-Saharan Africa risks losing US$11 billion annually if producers cannot comply. But here is the puzzle: how do you implement a regulation that demands formal land titles when 80% of land is held under customary tenure? How do you trace beans to specific plots when half of all cocoa flows through informal intermediaries who mix harvests from dozens of farms? This project develops the concept of 'polycentric compliance' to understand what happens when Global North regulatory demands meet Global South institutional realities.