>>reporter: this week on world business the vast new port complex and rail network planned for abu dhabi. >>it's a massive undertaking, it's about industrial clusters linking primary industries such as aluminium, steel, glass and many others >>reporter: the cyclones and floods that hit australia this year took a massive toll and the countryis still counting the costs. >>the damage has been done and we believe that queensland will fall up short by about 30 million tons of coal production, >>reporter: and an innovative solution to india's problems with plastic waste. >>what's interesting is that now it's not a question of okay, it's green therefore we must, it's a question of actually economically it makes more sense to do that.

>>reporter: hello and welcome. i'm raya abirached and this is world business, your weekly insight into the global business trends shaping our lives. the emirate of abu dhabi, capital of the uae is in the process of building the region's largest industrial zone. it will be served by a vast new port and the country's first railway network, but is itthe right time in the global economic cycle for such ambitious plans? >>reporter: last november the first ship arrived at abu dhabi's port khalifa. it's not fully open for business yet but when finished it will be an integral part of kizad, a 417 square kilometre industrial zone being built some 60 km from abu dhabi's

capital. the first phase should be ready by the fourth quarter of 2012 at a cost of 7.2 billion dollars. >>douglas: it's a massive undertaking, it's about industrial clusters linking primary industries such as aluminium steel, glass and many others into clusters where the mid stream industries and the down stream industries can get benefits of economy of pr >>reporter: the zone is part of abu dhabi's plan to diversify its economy with unemployment running at an estimated 13%, create much needed jobs >>douglas: there's two very clear measures of success for kizad - economic diversity and the target's 15% of the gdp of non-oil generated benefits by 2030 but also to create up to one hundred thousandquality jobs >>al kawari: they are very much an enabler for economic development. they are a key part for the diversification, an encouragement

of the diversification of the economy. >>reporter: abu dhabi, with seven per cent of the world's oil reserves can afford to spend heavily to achieve this but, there are other factors that help. >>sousa: one of the advantages of the gulf economies have being young economies is that they can actually start from scratch. they don't inherit a legacy of industry deep inland or somewhere else theycan actually build industry and plan it from the get go to link up with the transportation and optimise the logistics of any industrial plan that they are actually putting in place. >>reporter: the development is also designed to take advantage of fundamental changes to the global economy. >>douglas: since 1980 the industry has absolutely transformed in terms of sea trade and certainly what we've seen over that time is that the far east has gone from 30% of the world's global trade up to 60% >>gokkent: there is a shift in the centre of gravity in terms of global economic activity and the trade

pattern, i think is changing to reflect that and over the next few years, i think the linkages, the trade linkages with the asian economies, the emerging economies will be greater. >>reporter: 46.5 billion dollars is currently being spent on ports across the middle east - which raises the question of over capacity. kizad is being built just down the road from the giant dubai port of jebel ali. does the uae really need two ports? >>sousa: i think that the manufacturing output of the region is going to justify the investment in the ports. i also think that while there are a number of ports that are popping up across the coast of the arabian gulf those ports are not necessarily competing with one another. for example the port that is coming to abu dhabi is not going to be competing with jebel ali, the existing port. the abu dhabi port is primarily aimed at servicing emal the emirates aluminium plant and other ancillary industries that are going to take hold in that area.

>>reporter: there's also the issue of whether it is being built at the wrong time in the global economic cycle? >>gokkent: the share of economic activity for gcc economies and in general the middle east i think is rising within global economic activity. so we are projecting in the next five years in fact for the shares of mena economies to near double. >>reporter: abu dhabi is also investing heavily in trains, building a rail network that will initially stretch from inland gas fields to the port of ruwais and should be completed by 2013. >>bowker: we will be removing for adnoc around 7 and half million tonnes of sulphur per annum from the new plants in the western region by 2014... one train can remove around 300 lorries, 300 trucks from the road. so that's a huge benefit in terms of safety, in terms of the environment and so on. >>reporter: by 2018 the uae will have at a cost of 10.9 billion dollars, 1,200

kilometres of track linking all the uae's major ports, cities and airports. >>bowker: there's a railway network being planned in oman, in saudi arabia, in bahrain, in kuwait and qatar and that will be genuinely joined up so we are building the railway to the same technical standards - the track's the same distance apart, the signalling system's the same, and so on and so forth, to make sure that you can have sort of seamless movement between the various countries. longer term we could even see further afield. it's not that far into the future that we could run railway trains into europe. >>reporter: there's no doubt abu dhabi has ambitious plans. the thing is though - it can afford to make them happen. but the question remains whether there is the demand or necessity to fill an industrial zone the size of singapore. >>reporter: natural disasters this year alone have had

a devastating effect on countries in the asiapacific region not least for the loss of human life but also the economic impact. australia was hitby a double blow - the worst flooding in queensland in 37 years and then a cyclone - bigger than hurricane katrina. but australians are nothing if not resilient. >>reporter: the lucky country's good fortune ran out in january when the sunshine state was inundated with torrential rain and floods...and then cyclone yarsi whipped up the misery even further. >>scott: the rosalie area of brisbane was one of the worst hit by the floods. all of this was underwater. yet many of the businesses are now back, up and running but they couldn't have done it withoutthe help of an army of volunteers. yet they say the trade is still very slow. >>cowie: devastating. it completely just... it completely ruins you... for - it's been two months for us to reopen with bills that

are...bills that still come in and then... to refit the place again... bills that are hitting tens, almost a hundred thousand dollars... so, it's a lot of money and that's not just lying around. so very hard on you personally and business-wise. ' >>reporter: some, though, had a flood plan >>lewis: so we put that into place and then we built levy banks all around the front of our store here... in the front to that side right around to the other tenancy and those banks were very effective. we did the right thing. we put the black plastic up two metres... siliconed the plastic to the footpath and to the walls of the building and then retained the plastic by using sandbags. >>reporter: for many the disaster was compounded by being under insured or for many not being insured at all... >>gronn: i lost my job last year after 13 years and so that went by the wayside. so, yeah, no insurance but there was

an appeal called the premier's disaster relief fund and i was entitled to a$2000 from that and a$1000 from the federal government... which has brought me a fair bit of paint. >>reporter: but 21 percent of queensland's income is resources and mining... contributing nearly 53 billion us dollars to queensland's gross state product... with coal making up two thirds of that. resources one of the reason's australia's economy is so robust with china and japan its biggest customers... but many open pit mines have been flooded. >>roche: the damage has been done and we believe that queensland will fall up short by about 30 million tons of coal production, that's about 5 billion dollars that goes missing this financial year. we've been tracking the status of exports and the latest figures we've seen show that we're 30 percent below the same time of last year... so for the year as a whole, we're

hoping we can hold it to a loss of about 15 percent >>reporter: the good news is that all the ports have been opened and that the rail infrastructure isback on track but there is still a problem with what to do with water pumped from the mines >>roche: three out of every four coal mines in queensland, that's nearly 60 of them, have special approvals to discharge water... that's helping. but for many mines it'll be a case of building small dams, investing in other infrastructure, perhaps even investing in treatment plants to clean the water up to a status that will allow them to safely discharge it into the environment... so that's the challenge >>reporter: another big earner for queensland is tourism, employing 10 percent of its workforce - 3 times more than mining. the industry took a hard hit from the floods but it is the perception that the whole state was under water that did the most harm.

>>gschwind: when the message went out, early in the piece, that the size of germany is flood affected as was often quoted in the overseas media, we have to remember that queensland is five times the size of germany, five times the size of the uk, 50 times the size of taiwan... but the damage that was done to our industry in particular, far exceeded the infrastructure damage... it was the perception that was created both inter-state in australia but also overseas, importantly, that queensland's the entire state was flood-affected... was disaster-affected, and was probably not a good place to visit... and that is what really made our industry suffer the most. >>reporter: in all it looks like it will take more than 8 billion us dollars to repair the damage tothe whole state: some of that raised by a special one-off levy from all australian taxpayers. whatever the final repair bill, economic growth will be affected: >>fraser: well, prior to the floods, we were looking at an economy that would grow around 3 and three quarter

percent this financial year and then back towards a trend growth of 4 and a half percent next financial year. the result of the loss of production from the floods and, indeed the cyclone, infar north queensland, has us tracking to record growth of around 1 percent this year... >>reporter: queenslanders, though are an optimistic breed; >>gronn: i think it has been a positive thing. i've cleared out a lot of stuff that i didn't want... half the stuff i didn't know i had... it has really made me rise to the occasion to get the house fixed up >>gschwind: we will certainly see an enormous outburst of wild flowers of wild life that we haven't seen for years because we have been in drought for so long... so there are some advantages. there'sa silver lining always... and we will certainly encourage people to go and see the natural wonders that are provided through even those catastrophes we had. >>fraser: amongst all the losses there's actually something that was regained and that was people remembered the true varieties of the human spirit... the raw humanness of joining

together... of helping your neighbour and helping those beside you...and i think people rediscovered a lot about themselves and their own communities >>reporter: still to come on world business... >>how india is dealing with plastic waste, by incorporating it into new roads >>and we drop in at the french alps for a spot of speed riding. >>fast, furious and flying high... and the rest in just a moment on world business... >>reporter: india is drowning in a sea of garbage; almost the entire country is littered with tons of plastic waste. but now an innovative company from bangalore is developing a process of recycling industrial quantities

of plastic into hard wearing road surfaces. >>the ancient country of india is marred by a very modern problem; every day thousands of tons of plastic waste is dumped onto the nation's streets. >>in towns and villages across the country, discarded plastic bottles, packing material and bags clog up lakes, ditches and the stomachs of wandering cows. >>sadashiviah: if you take the entire state of karnataka it will be about 300 tons of plastics per day is disposed of. if you take bangalore itself as an example, all the drains are clogged because ofplastics thrown everywhere >>reporter: and this plastic garbage is here to stay.... it takes decades for it to break down. >>when it does a toxic cocktail of chemicals is released into the environment. even the sacred river ganges is a toxic soup of industrial chemicals and decaying plastic garbage. but there could be one simple solution; put

the plastic waste into new roads >>khan: look at this type of plastic. this is waste plastic. we are shifting this plastic waste to our factory and we've converted into kk poly blend. that blend will be using in this road construction. >>reporter: in bangalore, 1500 kms of plastic roads have already been laid using 5000 tons of waste. >>khan: bangalore is a very big city, metropolitan city which generates around 5000 tons of municipal solid waste and say that is about, 2% of it is about 100 tons of waste plastic is generated every day. >>reporter: fortunately attitudes towards waste are changing in india. at this apartment complex, two residents have started their own recycling scheme. the plastic is sorted into different types thenbagged up for collection >>we have 900 apartments altogether in this building and almost 80% of people are

participating. >>reporter: the plastic is weighed and the apartment residents receive 6 rupees a kilo >>everybody is interested in making the money. so when you're making money out of garbage, people doit >>reporter: and it's not just apartment residents who are making money from garbage". school kids bring plastic for recycling from home. the money enables the school to buy new books and computers. >>teachers hope that by educating the children they can educate the parents; who are often unaware of the dangers caused by plastic waste". >>there is many different types of plastic waste and altogether they're of absolutely no use, all they do is pollute. but if you segregate it, if you take out the plastic and the metal and the organicwaste all of it is of some value. >>reporter: and for the millions of poor people who go out onto the streets every day to collect this so-called 'dirty plastic', it's some kind of a living too. when the plastic arrives back at the factory any dirty plastic first has to be cleaned and then ground down

into tiny granules. >>the principle of blending plastics into roads is not new, and has been used in the west for some time. this rough and ready version may be cheaper than its counterparts from the developed world, butquestions have been asked about the consistency of material used and degradation down the line. >>collap: their technology is obviously slightly different, essentially they're modifying bitumen with recycled plastic bags and so they would expect to get some performance benefits provided that thesystem is investigated properly, particularly in terms of permanent defamation, resistance. which in a country like india, where the temperatures are very high, it's probably one of the main modes ofpavement distress >>one of the things you have to be mindful of with secondary materials or recycled materials is the variability that you can sometimes get with recycled materials; they're obviously coming from lots of different sources, they've been processed in different ways so you need to have appropriate quality control procedures in place to make sure that one batch of the recycled material gives

very similar physical properties to another batch of recycled material. >>reporter: there are many indian firms that recycle plastics, but incorporating them into roads is a relatively new concept here. another pilot scheme was carried out in the state of himachal pradesh, but for now there is no real competition. >>this is however practically guaranteed to change. india is in the process of building a vast network of new highways and upgrading many more existing roads, increasing the demand for materials >>narula: with this massive requirement of development we need - resources are going to become a limitation. i mean there's only - if you see where the prices of oil are heading a replacement for bitumen is a major benefit, i mean from a developer perspective. >>sadashiviah: the cost may be slightly more than the normal cost of resurfacing the asphalted roadsbut considering the fact that it will enhance the life

of the road surface by about 30% to 40%, i think it will be a very welcome thing too. and i'm sure the government actually will take a policy decision to see that it is made mandatory. >>narula: what's interesting is is that now it's not a question of okay, it's green therefore we must, it's a question of actually economically it makes more sense to that. and i think that any product heading in that direction is better for everyone, you know and i think for that reason it's something we're looking at very aggressively. >>reporter: so maybe roadbuilding is part of the solution for removing the plastic waste from india's streets and rivers. and if it works there, it might be a solution to similar problems all over theworld. >>reporter: speed riding is a combination of downhill skiing and paragliding. the world championships are held in the small french ski resort of samoens, and this spring we went along to find

out more. >>reporter: speed riding, quite possibly the most adrenaline-fuelled extreme sport in the world. a high octane combination of freeride skiing and paragliding, riders can reach speeds of close to 200 km an hour as they ski impossible lines, flying over any cliffs that get in their way. >>the french national championships take place every april in samoens, in the french alps. since 2005 the sport has been officially recognised by the french federation and has grown up from being practised by a handful of pioneers to over 5000 people worldwide. >>roussel: each year we are growing. there is a leader

market which is france and then switzerland. and now it's coming from more and more countries in the world like usa, new zealand, sweden, norway.also in chile, argentina so it's really growing and for us we are the leaders in the market. >>reporter: the national speed riding championships take place over several disciplines, the derby event, essentially slalom, speed riding style, where competitors have to touch down between specific gates, and big mountain freeride, the purest expression of the sport. >>bon: the derby style is always funny because it's like a game you play with your friends and you try to be as technical as possible but for me the true spirit of speed riding is the free ride task. it's a face, it's slow you express yourself

as you want with your technique and your idea of the line and your idea of the style and then there is a jury which is noting all that kind of criteria is, technique, fluidity, style, line. >>reporter: and it is events like these which are helping to promote and grow the sport >>roussel: it gives a possibility for the normal rider to come and to try and ride with the best ones then a technical level improves. this is important to improve the technical level because like that we can show people from all over the world sport is very safe and very easy to do and then more people will come so we can see the first advantage is technical improvement of the riders. >>reporter: and for the resort it's not just about putting on a show. it's a unique way to promote themselves to a wider audience. samoens

has invested 30,000 euro on the event in order to promote theoff-piste potential of the area, particularly in late season >>boden: this is a great, very great investment ... we need to find new holidaymakers in mafrch and april and through these activities we could interest people through the world and especially in europe >>reporter: other sponsors too have been quick to align their brands with this new sport. >>bidaux: the idea is to show that fischer is not only fischer racing ski but is also about a free ride ski. last year we we sponsored one athlete who is in the speed riding this year with the idea being to show that we have a good free ride ski

>>reporter: and even though it's still very much a niche sport, because of its skiing roots it has wider appeal to sponsors >>montant: we interest the ski market and this is a big market so it's more easy in speed riding to find some sponsor than in paragliding >>reporter: significantly, for good skiers at least, it's also much easier to learn than paragliding, and with costs of around 1500 euro for a new canopy and harness, setup costs are another obstacle that can be leaped >>montant: it's quite easy to learn... the most important is to have a good ski level at the beginning because we take off fast we land fast and we're always playing off-piste in different snow conditions so it's important to be a good skier but then it's easy to understand and learn how to pilot the wing >>reporter: the skill, and thrill, of speed riding is not when you are flying but when you are skiing,

the idea is to stay close to the ground and only use the kite when you need to. but of course like any pioneering extreme sport its dangerous and can be fatal. nine people have been killed since the sport was first conceived 10 years ago, a ratio of around 500:1. so while it is undeniably dangerous, it's all about managing the risk >>bon: you have to be centred and cool and always think correctly as to what happens and how you manage it and everything so yes of course it's a skiing sport, it's a flying sport, the speed can be very high in places where we go can be very steep so of course it can be dangerous but the only thing is it depends on how you do it and the main word is pleasure. >>reporter: and do you have to be a little bit crazy? >>montant: no no no, just

enough just to want to do it, just want to go, just to want to practice. but if you are just crazy you cannot do it a long time >>reporter: so those backing the sport will hope that while numbers grow ever skyward, the athletes themselves keep their feet on the ground. >>reporter: that's it for this week's world business. thanks for watching. we'll see you again at the same time next week.