Secure tenure rights are crucial for forest conservation. Since 2007 the government of Indonesia has allocated 14 million hectares of forests to community management through various schemes. However, such formal schemes do not offer full ownership rights to the forest, as do customary systems, such as that in Malaku province. As a result, forest reforms launched in 2009 have not taken hold there. Research undertaken as part of the Global Comparative Study (GCS) on Land Tenure Reform, led by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), examined ways that tenure reform might combine the formal and customary system in Malaku to provide communities with secure forest tenure, to benefit them and the forests.