{"id":6160,"date":"2020-10-29T00:25:07","date_gmt":"2020-10-29T08:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/?p=6160"},"modified":"2020-10-29T00:47:48","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T08:47:48","slug":"behind-the-scene-paragliding-action-to-save-our-lantau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/blog\/6160\/behind-the-scene-paragliding-action-to-save-our-lantau\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the scene: Paragliding action to \u201cSave Our Lantau\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Two volunteer paragliders, bearing the message of \u2018Save Our Lantau\u2019, were flying above the beautiful nature of Lantau on 30th<\/sup> September. This is an action to showcase the strong will of over 120 thousand citizens who have signed the petition demanding the government to stop the controversial plan on building artificial islands in the Central Waters of Hong Kong. Why did they join the action of \u201cSave Our Lantau\u201d? Let\u2019s speak to the two paragliders for more behind-the-scenes stories.<\/p>\n\n

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Greenpeace\u2019s \u201cSave Our Lantau\u201d Paragliding Actions. \u00a9 Vincent Chan \/ Greenpeace<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Will the beauty of Lantau stay?<\/h2>\n\n

\u201cThe mountains, the sea, and the beach are beautiful, especially on a day when the water is clear and you look down from the sky.\u201d To the female paraglider, the colours of Hong Kong water is comparable to Okinawa, especially on the dry days where there has been no rain for a period of time, \u201cYou can even tell the colour difference in the deep and shallow water, which is amazing.\u201d As rain will flood the sand and mud to the sea, the water is less clear after rainy days.<\/p>\n\n

The male paraglider, as a diving enthusiast, has an even more in-depth observation towards the sea water. With 5 years\u2019 of experience in paragliding, he finds that the Hong Kong water is dirty, \u201cIt looks clear at a glance, but if you look from the sky, the water is yellowish as the reclamation work lifted up the mud from the sea.\u201d He sighed, \u201cIf the reclamation work is not stopping, the situation is no doubt getting worse.\u201d He decided to take action before it is too late. \u201cNature is the gift of the Earth; it should stay what it is without human interference. Once we damage nature, it takes a long time to recover.\u201d No one is certain on how the \u2018Tomorrow Lantau\u2019 project would negatively impact the environment, and we need to speak now to prevent it from happening, he added.<\/p>\n\n

The paragliding action to raise awareness on saving the Lantau<\/h2>\n\n

On the day of the paragliding action, the two pilots took off from the airfield on the east side of South Lantau and soared into the sky for 10 minutes. Besides demonstrating the message of \u201cSave Our Lantau\u201d, the paragliders were documenting the beauty and the ecological environment of the island.<\/p>\n\n

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The beautiful and valuable environment of Lantau can stay through sustainable development planning. \u00a9 Vincent Chan \/ Greenpeace<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Greenpeace initiated this action in response to the upcoming meeting of the Legislative Council\u2019s Finance Committee on approving the $550 million “Lantau Tomorrow” preliminary research funding. As Lantau is where the Hong Kong airport is located, there are designated areas for paragliding. Greenpeace also worked closely with the pilots to ensure the action was comply with the flight regulations and air traffic safety. Besides paragliding, Greenpeace activists also launched the “Save Our Lantau” banners on a beach, raising public awareness of protecting Lantau in solidarity.<\/p>\n\n

The action making-of<\/h2>\n\n

The Greenpeace paragliding and activist teams arrived at Tung Chung at 8am, where the flying team headed off to Pak Kung Au and the others went to the Cheung Sha beach to set up. It was indeed full of emotions and enthusiasm witnessing the action come to live after months of preparation, feasibility studies, planning and rehearsals. When the team was ready on site, they then need to wait for the \u2018green light\u2019 from nature – the appropriate wind direction and speed.<\/p>\n\n

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The gear of paragliding is heavy, the two pilots need to take 85 litres of equipment to the mountains.  \u00a9 Vincent Chan \/ Greenpeace<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

\u201cFirst, it\u2019s the rain, then the wind direction was not right. We were almost giving up until we saw a rainbow in the midst of bad weather. To me it is a sign that encourages me to not giving up.\u201d The female pilot recalled. \u201cParagliding is like uniting with nature. This is also the time where I find that I am so close to nature. As paragliding needs wind, and the whole process is truly depending on the wind, you can feel that humans are so powerless in front of nature.\u201d She also shared a tip on finding the \u2018right wind\u2019 for flying, \u2018When I see black kites (the eagles commonly seen in Hong Kong) soaring around, I know I have the suitable weather. That\u2019s why I always follow them and let them guide my way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

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The weather was unstable on the action day, but the pilots managed to catch the opportunity in the midst of bad weather and took off to the sky successfully. \u00a9 Vincent Chan \/ Greenpeace<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Why are the pilots joining Greenpeace in protecting the Lantau? \u201cCome on, Lantau is amazing, please don\u2019t destroy it!\u201d said the pilots, \u201cWe share the same value with Greenpeace in protecting the environment, and we wanted to contribute what we have so we have no regret.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

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Thank you to the two volunteer paragliders, together let\u2019s \u201cSave Our Lantau\u201d. \u00a9 Vincent Chan \/ Greenpeace<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Greenpeace\u2019s \u201cSave Our Lantau\u201d campaign<\/h2>\n\n

Besides protecting the environment especially the marine ecosystems in our waters from excessive reclamation and infrastructure works, stopping the reclamation can also protect the sustainability of Hong Kong\u2019s public finance. Greenpeace has published the \u2018Analysis of Lantau Tomorrow’s Impact on Hong Kong Public Finance\u2019 report\u2019. The report finds that Hong Kong\u2019s public finance is facing multiple crises such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, aging population and economic downturn. If the government pushes through the \u201cLantau Tomorrow\u201d reclamation project, Hong Kong\u2019s fiscal reserves may risk being drained in 11 years.<\/p>\n\n

Compared with the Lantau Tomorrow, developing brownfield sites is more cost-effective.<\/p>\n\n

According to Greenpeace , developing brownfield sites costs only about HK$33.3 billion and it could provide at least 139,000 new homes, roughly the same amount as reclamation. Therefore, Greenpeace urges the government to prioritize development of brownfield sites and to withdraw the Lantau Tomorrow reclamation project.<\/p>\n\n

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Save Our Lantau!\u00a9 Vincent Chan \/ Greenpeace<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two volunteer paragliders, bearing the message of \u2018Save Our Lantau\u2019, were flying above the beautiful nature of Lantau on 30th September. This is an action to showcase the strong will…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":6161,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"not set","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"p4-page-type":[26],"class_list":["post-6160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-live-sustainably","category-protect-nature","p4-page-type-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6160"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6170,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6160\/revisions\/6170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6160"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/eastasia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=6160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}