This paper evaluated the major challenges to national forestry programmes at a time of great need for new policy to support social forestry. The chief argument of the paper was that policy reforms should shift the locus of control over forest resources from a national to a local level. Among other issues, the author considered the tensions between commercial and subsistence forestry, between rural and urban demands for forest products and between competing land uses. She noted that land tenure would continue to be the biggest limiting factor to developing forest policy.