Is Rio Olympics really green?

The Rio Olympics will prevent food waste.

It’s not clear how exactly but since the idea is based on the last Milan Expo, it is likely to include giving away surplus food to those who need it.

No doubt this is a good idea, because it can prevent real-time wastage while also serving as a precedent for other large events, even smaller ones. In general, this, along with its other greening plans, are to be encouraged.

Yet, can greening take place without human beings at the centre of the plan?

Take the case of food waste, to be given off to the hungry and the poor.

Every city in the world today has some or the other poor, some or the other hungry. You can do this almost anyplace.

But Rio could have given off food to greater numbers of hungry people, had it not forcibly evicted over 70,000 of them, including people with land titles.

Infact, its own brutal evictions would have caused structural hunger in ways that donating food surplus can’t change.

The evicted will have lost their primary assets — their homes, be far from their jobs and overall, have less money for food.

And this is the point. In this age of climate change, it is the people who are key to being green, particularly the poor.

If a green initiative unfolds where people have suffered, then can we really completely applaud it? I’d say, something is better than nothing, but let that not blind us to this grossly inadequate form of environmentalism.