Anonymized interview metadata from the study "First things first: How to keep the United Nations environmental agenda in times of crisis"
Abstract
This is a metadata register of the interviews conducted as part of the SNFS research project "First things first: How to keep the United Nations environmental agenda in times of crisis", grant nº200834, 2022-2025. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study, the project investigated the how United Nations (UN) staff attempted to maintain attention to the environment in times of crisis, when institutional priorities tend to shift toward short-term emergency response. By analyzing practices and discourses performed by different UN entities, the study seeked to understand the mechanisms of agenda-keeping and to shed light on how UN actors navigate fragmentation, competing policy domains, and diverging temporalities. The dataset contains anonymized metadata from 18 qualitative interviews conducted with current and former UN actors working on environmental and climate issues at both operational and policy levels, including staff from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) country office in Haiti, the UN Secretariat, and other roles related to the United Nations' action in the field of climate change and the environment. The interviewees occupy, or formerly occupied, positions ranging from operational to management and leadership functions. Data collection took place between September 2022 and October 2024, in French, English and Spanish. Interviews lasted between 26 minutes and 2 hours 10 minutes. In accordance with the conditions of participation and the consent agreement presented to and agreed on by all participants, only anonymized metadata are shared publicly, and no verbatim excerpts or full transcripts are released. The metadata include the interview number, the date, the duration of the interview, whether the interview was individual or collective, the interviewee's organization (or type of organization for diplomats), the interview location (without disclosing personal information), the interviewer(s), the language of the interview, and whether it was recorded. All anonymization procedures follow the project's Data Management Plan and adhere to the confidentiality commitments made to participants.For more information about the study design and research outputs, please consult https://lucilemaertens.com/first-things-first/ and the forthcoming publications listed in the "Related Work" section, or contact [email protected]