The management of forest resources in developing countries is often inefficient and this is particularly the case when the forest is a public good managed by the State. These inefficiencies are generally the result of both externalities and free-riding behaviours and the solution usually put forward is the privatisation of the forest. It appears, however, that in most cases, privatisation also exhibits its own inefficiencies, particularly when privatisation is imposed on the local populations. In this context, the aim of our contribution is to go beyond the usual state management vs privatisation debate to propose coordination schemes which take into account the institutional specificity of the economic context in which the natural resources are exploited. The purpose is to suggest solutions based on the necessity to find coherence between the external institutional structure and the behaviours of the local players; the institutional change required by the sustainable management of resources will not, then, be in contradiction with the norms, habits and routines which model such behaviours. In others words, the challenge is to establish the conditions of an induced rather than imposed institutional change, in order to provide an answer to the sustainable management of a shared natural resource. A property rights structure must be appreciated for us from a double standpoint. The first, the traditional one, sees the property rights structure as an efficient institutional structure which permits to economise costs, especially transaction costs. The second proposes to evaluate any property rights structure in the light of its ability to offer a solution to the issue of the articulation between the legal framework and the behaviours of the players. Our analysis will make use of our knowledge of the forest of Tiogo in Burkina Faso.