Based on several examples from West, Central and Eastern-Southern Africa, this paper discusses issues pertaining to the '4Rs' framework, an analytical framework which assesses local stakeholders' roles and resilience in relation to forest resource use and management via the balance/imbalance of their respective Rights, Responsibilities, Revenues/ Returns and Relationships (the '4Rs'). Rights over land and forests are at the heart of the debate, because the dualistic situation where formal and customary rules co-exist is often unsustainable. The policies aimed at improving tenure security have mostly failed and reinforced existing power structures, as they only address the spatial dimension of security, in contrast with the more social aspects of rights built in customary rules. Attempts such as formal titling of land on the one hand and codification and formalization of customary rules on the other hand, have not, so far, lived up to expectations. More recent experiments and proposals aimed at bridging the gap between customary and formal rules suggest that: " significant efforts should be made in informing stakeholders - especially at the resource level - about their formal rights and duties; " the current strategy, based on the distinction between private and public goods, should gradually shift to an approach based on locally derived rules (however recognized by the State), where rights would not be based on a fixed set of rules, but rather defined more on an ad-hoc basis, through a process of continued negotiation as ecological, social and economic conditions change; " hence, legislation should adapt to the reality rather than the reverse; " approaches should be progressive, selective and pragmatic.
