NIGEL HAGGAN

Nigel Haggan

Nigel Haggan spent 14 years developing cooperative fisheries management programs with BC First Nations.  He joined the UBC Fisheries Centre in 1993 as a Research Associate to explore how the academy might provide an alternative context to confrontation, court cases, and media wars. He  co-initiated and participated in numerous projects to build collective understanding of coastal and marine ecosystems as they were, as they are and what they might become.  

His current PhD research is on how to incorporate our emotional and spiritual connection to the ocean on an equal basis with economic and scientific considerations.

Spiritual values are not peculiarities of 'other' cultures.  All cultures are reflections of spirit.

What we call 'cultures' emerge from relationships between people, animals, plants, lands and waters.  Our engagement with the world is emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and economic.  Spirit is the recombinant power of a universe whose goal is complexity.  It is why a bird is not a fact, but a step between a dinosaur and something yet to be and a joy in itself.  It is the 10,000 or so populations of Pacific salmon that 'appeared' since the last Ice Age.  It is the belief that drives the artist, scientist and mystic in all of us to face down the border police, to ask new questions.  It is recognition of the difference between 'you' and 'me' and the spark that jumps between.

Belief that everything has a spiritual as well as a physical existence is consistent with grateful use and generosity, but not with depletion, extinction and environmental degradation.  I grew up in Northern Ireland, so I agree with Richard Dawkins that religion should have no civil power, nor dictate education.  That said, exclusion of 1,000s of years of spiritual and religious insights from our attempts at ecosystem valuation and management is at best, unwise.  It allows the human values concealed in the price of a barrel of oil to dominate government and the price of a kilo of farmed salmon to distort BC fisheries out of all recognition.

Research

The way spiritual values are expressed varies dramatically with cultural and ecological context.  Scientists rejoice in complexity, but the politician's response is to default to what can easily be measured.  The "One fish, two fish" of the Sesame Street Count trumps our personal accounts of the sacred, the places, animals, plants and people we love and would miss desperately if they were gone.   Unwillingness to sell, trade-off or even express our emotional attachment and spiritual values in dollar equivalents makes them notoriously difficult to incorporate in policy and decision-making. The flourishing of people, other species, lands and waters, now and into the deep future matters to all of us, no matter how differently we may feel or express it. 

Research questions

1.    Can a robust concept of the sacred be derived from pre-industrial and current relationships between Aboriginal people, others species, lands and waters in BC and elsewhere?  If so,

a)  Is this concept congruent with responses to the ecological and fisheries crisis from religious leaders, scholars and international organizations?

b)  How well is the sacred represented in whole ecosystem valuation frameworks, 'ecosystem-based management' and 'social-ecological systems'?

 2.  How would British Columbians respond to this concept of the sacred in the case of wild and farmed salmon?

Selected publications

Haggan, N. and Trosper, R. (in review) Epistemic injustice: Why it's hard to include the sacred in fisheries management.  In review for Canadian Journal of Native Studies. Abstract.

Haggan, N. (2011) You don't know what you've got till its gone: The case for spiritual values in marine ecosystem management. In: World Fisheries: A Social-Ecological Analysis. Perry, I., Ommer, R.E., Cury, P. et al. (eds). Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford. Abstract. Full text.

Haggan, N., Jackson, G.D. and Lacroix, P. (2009) Salmon and Eulachon in Ecosystem Space and time: A Plea for Better Collaboration and Data Integration.  In: Challengesfor Diadromous Fishes in a Dynamic Global Environment (ed Cunjak, R. et al.) American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, MD. Abstract.  Full text.

Haggan, N., Ainsworth, C., Pitcher, T.J. and Heymans, J.J. (2006) Life in the fast food chain: Ou sont les poissons d'antan?  Pages 51-74 in: Parrish, C.C., Turner, N. and Solberg, S. (eds) Resetting the Kitchen Table: Food Security, Culture, Health and Resilience in Coastal Communities. Nova Science, New York, 247p.  Abstract.  Full text.

Haggan, N., Neis, B. and Baird, I.G. (eds) (2007) Fishers' Knowledge in Fisheries Science and Management. UNESCO, Paris, 437p.  Contents.  Intro.  Chapter 1.

Haggan, N. and Neis, B. (2007) The changing face of Fisheries Science and Management.  Pages 421-432 in: Haggan, N., Neis, B. and Baird, I.G. (eds) Fishers' Knowledge in Fisheries Science and Management. UNESCO, Paris, 437p. Full text.

Pitcher, T.J., Morato, T., Hart, P.J.B., Clark, M., Haggan, N. and Santos, R. (eds) (2007) Seamounts: Ecology, Fisheries and Conservation. Blackwell, Oxford, UK, 536p. Overview.  Contents.

Haggan, N., Turner, N.J., Carpenter, J., Jones, J.T., Menzies, C. and Mackie, Q. (2006) 12,000+ years of change: Linking traditional and modern ecosystem science in the Pacific Northwest. UBC Fisheries Centre Working Paper #2006-02. Abstract.  Full text.

Haggan, N., Narcisse, A., Sumaila, U.R., Lucas, Chief Simon and Turner, N.J. (2005) Pacific Ecosystems, Past Present and Future: Integrating Knowledge and Values, Anticipating Climate Change. Society for Ecological Restoration International/Indigenous Peoples’ Restoration Network session, Zaragoza, Spain, September 12 - 18, 2005.  PowerPoint. Conference paper.

Haggan, N. (2000) Back to the Future and Creative Justice. Pages 83-99 in, Coward, H., Ommer, R.E. and Pitcher, T.J. (eds) Just Fish: Ethics in the Canadian Coastal Fisheries. ISER Books, St. John's, 304p.  Full text.

Haggan, N. (1998) Reinventing the Tree: reflections on the organic growth and creative pruning of fisheries management structures. Pages 19-30 in: Pitcher, T.J., Hart, P.J.B. and Pauly, D. (eds)Reinventing Fisheries Management, Chapman and Hall, London, 435p.  Abstract.  Full text.