PANGEA WORLD’s mission is founded upon the principles and credentials of the TCR economic-development model (“Tourism for Conservation through Research”). The TCR is a vision and art of crafting and distinguishing a strategic union of an economic or business aspiration (of a nation or a tourism/hotel enterprise), frontier scientific research, and proactive natural and cultural conservation. This union is catalyzed by an original instrument of “TCR Heritage Themes” that capture the dynamics and inter-relationships among multiple heritage resources in a manner that systematically and simultaneously augments the scientific, conservation, and economic importance of these resources.
PANGEA WORLD’s president, Dr. Hana Ayala, is the originator of the TCR model. The TCR has been endorsed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (a bureau of the Smithsonian Institution that has produced one of the most extensive databases available in the tropics), and other prominent international agencies. Dr. Richard S. Nicholson, former AAAS executive officer & publisher of the journal Science, has emphasized the TCR’s potential to help implement all six of the strategic objectives of AAAS (i.e., to further the work of scientists; to facilitate cooperation among scientists; to foster scientific responsibility; to advance science education; to use science in the promotion of human welfare; and to increase public appreciation of the promise of science in human progress) on a scale that scientists could not otherwise imagine happening (R. Nicholson, “Keynote Speech,” in M.S. Ratchford, editor, TCR Strategic Alliance: Tourism-Conservation-Research. Washington, DC: AAAS, 1999, 21-24).
The TCR has been featured in media ranging from Insula – International Journal of Island Affairs (September 1995), Hotels (March 1999), Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly (August 1997, October 1998, February 2000, and June 2000), and Condé Nast Traveller U.K. (December 1999) to Science (28 May 1999), Scientific American(December 1999), Architecture (April 1999), Civilization – The Magazine of the Library of Congress (December 1999/January 2000), and Business Panama (May 2004 and August 2004).
