In the past a wide spectrum of conservation strategies has been used to manage forests and recently a country-driven policy instrument known as REDD has been proposed as a new tool for forest protection. This paper reviews a set of Cameroon policy instruments alongside 86 relevant publications in the conservation area to feed the existing REDD debate. Two specific shortcomings are identified: (1) incoherence between existing forestry policy instruments with regard to community forest concept and REDD rules and (2) locally over-constraining approaches used in forest management which would provide guidelines and caution about the REDD implementation. These shortcomings, if not considered, may lead to ineffectiveness of emission reduction programs as well as to social disconnection at the local level. This means that effective implementation of REDD will require further policy actions mainly dealing with actors' consents within developed equitable instruments while setting up efficient conflict management systems.