Illegal logging is a threat to biodiversity and rural livelihoods in the Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park, the largest protected area in the Philippines. Every year between 20,000 and 35,000 cu. m wood is extracted from the park. The forestry service and municipal governments tolerate illegal logging in the protected area; government offi cials argue that banning an important livelihood activity of households along the forest frontier will aggravate rural poverty. However this reasoning underestimates the scale of timber extraction, and masks resource capture and collusive corruption. Illegal logging in fact forms an obstacle for sustainable rural development in and around the protected area by destroying ecosystems, distorting markets, and subverting the rule of law. Strengthening law enforcement and controlling corruption are prerequisites for sustainable forest management in and around protected areas in insular southeast Asia.

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International cooperation has come to be a crucial requirement for large new research projects funded by donor agencies. At the same time, recruitment of foreign students is a policy aim for many universities in their struggle for survival and recognition. This process of internationalization leads to various kinds of cooperation between universities of different countries.Several forms of cooperation between universities of Western and developing countries, can be distinguished. The first kind is cooperation projects aimed at the improvement of research and educational facilities of institutions in the recipient countries. Funding for such projects is provided by bilateral or multilateral donor agencies, while staff members of university institutions from the West act as consultants and implement the projects. Relevant research components are integrated into these projects, making them beneficial to the host institutions. Donor agencies, however, make sure that the development aim of the projects is not sacrificed for the sake of the academic interests of the host institutions. The projects consist of teaching and training components, exchange of students and staff, fellowship programmes, human resource development, curriculum development, and physical infrastructure (buildings, cars, laboratory and library facilities). They are usually characterized by relatively large budgets and require involvement not only of academics but also of technical staff and university administrators. Because of the attractive financial benefits, there is often a strong political component attached to these projects, reflected, for example, in the choice of favoured universities. Moreover, the fact that there are three or more parties involved -at least one donor agency and two universitiesgives rise to potential friction because of diverging interests and evaluation criteria (Wachter 1999).The second kind of cooperation is projects that can be characterized as a