The benefits of being born in a beachside country

There’s an intriguing article in openDemocracy.net ("Aiming for the sea" by George South) about the negative consequences for economic development of being landlocked. 

We all know that the presence of natural resources often has a decisive impact on a country’s fortunes–in some cases for the worse, though, as the tragic legacy of African diamonds and Arab oil shows; the main blessings for normal people of such easy-to-horde natural resources are often corruption and authoritarianism–but we don’t often consider the importance of having ports.

One interesting fact:  It costs 7 times more to transport goods over land than sea.  That’s a huge additional expense for a number of already impoverished countries.

Consider these statistics. Outside of
western and central Europe, the average income of landlocked countries
is just $1,771, compared with $5,567 for coastal nations. It has been
estimated that growth rates of the world’s thirty-one landlocked
developing countries (LLDCs) are 0.7-1% lower than they might otherwise have been, as a direct
result of their being landlocked. The UN Human Development Index reads
like a grim advertisement for the benefits of a coastal existence: life
expectancy in LLDCs is 3.5 years lower than in their maritime
neighbours, and education index scores are 0.36 lower, on a scale of 0
to 1. Nine of the world’s twenty poorest countries are landlocked, and
sixteen of the thirty LLDCs are classified as "least developed".