This talk describes research findings on the environmental governance of deforestation-risk supply chains with a focus on cocoa, oil palm, soy, and beef in Brazil, Indonesia, and West Africa. I describe the results of 10 years of research on zero-deforestation commitments – policies initiated by companies and import regions to not source products associated with deforestation. Drawing on 4000 household interviews, 100s of semi-structured interviews, regional econometric and spatial models, and general-equilibrium approaches using newly developed trade and remote sensing datasets, I briefly summarise the current state of policies and their effectiveness. I describe what is working for tropical forest conservation in these cases, what is not, and where we need to go from here. I highlight how zero-deforestation policies have had a measurable, but often small impact on deforestation control due to problems with their scope, coverage, and implementation. I then focus more deeply on the politics of these policies and major equity considerations, highlighting many intractable tensions that require both new tools, but also a rethinking of dominant approaches to reconciling conservation and development objectives in tropical forest frontiers.