The chapters that follow seek to assess the efficacy of the laws, policies and institutions that governments have established for protected-area management in Indonesia and Malaysia. In the process, the chapters analyse systemic governance problems such as the failure of laws (and lawmakers) to respond to the biological, sociological and political tensions inherent in protected-area management. Underlying such concerns is the practical problem of how different levels of government (at the federal/central, state/provincial and village/local interstices) may actually be working at cross-purposes in law-making and policy-setting, rather than in a coordinated and coherent fashion. In particular, the political challenges of federalism in Malaysia and the more recent regional autonomy movement in Indonesia will be assessed in relation to their impact on protected areas and local communities.

At its core, the problem is one of governance. The integrity of designated protected areas, be these terrestrial or marine areas, depends on the sanctity of their boundaries and the accommodation of competing uses. These are only possible if potentially conflicting priorities such as local communities' livelihoods, natural-resource extraction and spatial planning can be equitably and predictably reconciled. Consequently, protected-area management and biodiversity conservation must be conducted in a manner that takes into account the myriad economic activities (both legal or otherwise) that occur outside such areas, the encroachment that may take place into protected areas and the buffer zones around them and the legitimate customary rights of access enjoyed by communities living off the resources in these areas.