|
By Zahra Hirji and Lauren
Rosenthal
Will the Federal
Emergency Management Agency be abolished? That’s
the question that’s been looming over the agency
since Donald Trump retook the White House. And
it may finally be answered in the coming weeks
when a review council unveils its
recommendations.
A group of
high-profile emergency managers, senior
administration officials and other politicians
selected by Trump has been working on a report
based on input from emergency managers,
nonprofits and disaster survivors. The council
is scheduled to
vote on its final recommendations at a public
meeting on Dec. 11. But infighting among members
has left those recommendations up in the air,
according to two people familiar with the matter
who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
Secretary
Kristi Noem co-chairs the council. Photographer:
Eric Lee/Bloomberg
A draft version
suggested that FEMA be preserved and made an
independent agency, moving it from under the
Department of Homeland Security. But it’s
unclear if those top-line recommendations will
be passed along to President Trump by DHS
Secretary Kristi Noem, who co-chairs the council
and has been among the most vocal supporters of
eliminating FEMA in its current form. That’s
caused confusion and frustration among the other
council members in behind-the-scenes
conversations over the past few weeks, the
people say.
Cameron Hamilton,
who briefly served as Trump’s FEMA chief this
year and opposes abolishing the
agency, has been observing the council’s
work from afar. “My concern,” he says, is that
Noem and her advisors “are giving the president
their feedback and not accurately reflecting the
expertise of those around them.”
Noem “has worked
with committee members collaboratively on the
reform report that will be completed in the
coming weeks,” a FEMA spokesperson said in an
email. “The claims of her or other political
staff altering the report are unequivocally
false.”
FEMA has been on
the frontlines of responding to increasingly
worse weather disasters, but has faced heavy criticism
from Trump and Noem for not helping survivors
fast enough, focusing too much on climate
change, and being biased against Trump
supporters.
The review
council’s final report will be shared with the
president and other top White House officials.
While the president may be able to enact some
changes directly, any large-scale moves such as
closing or renaming the agency will need to go
through Congress, emergency management experts
say.
By Frances Schwartzkopff
Amundi says it’s
expecting to see more inflows as a result of
what it describes as ongoing adjustments in
institutional mandates triggered by a growing
desire to manage climate risk.
Europe’s largest
money manager, which last month reported a
record €2.32 trillion ($2.68 trillion) of assets
under management, is already seeing the benefits
of its focus on climate, according
to Jean-Jacques Barberis, Amundi’s head of
institutional, corporate clients and ESG.
An emphasis on
sustainability has become “a differentiating
element to conquer more business on the
institutional side,” Barberis said in an
interview. “We remain extremely
confident.”
How asset managers
handle sustainability issues such as climate and
equal pay is turning into a litmus test for a
growing number of long-term investors. In
Europe, Dutch pensions fund PFZW recently
reassigned listed-equities mandates worth more
than $60 billion, citing sustainability as a key
factor. Managers to have lost PFZW contracts in
the process include BlackRock Inc. and AQR
Capital Management.
And on Wednesday
it emerged that
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander asked
three of the city’s pension funds to drop a
BlackRock mandate, citing “inadequate” climate
plans. The world’s largest money manager
oversees $42.3 billion of index funds for the
pensions.
Read
the full story here.
|
