The future of maritime connectivity lies not only in keeping sea lanes open, but in ensuring that the benefits of global trade are shared by the economies that host and depend on them
This piece is part of the series 'Governing the Oceans: Rethinking Access and Equity'
More than 80 percent of the volume of world merchandise trade moves by sea, and the share is higher still for most developing economies. Asia and the Pacific sit at the centre of this system. Asia alone handles roughly 63 percent of global container trade and concentrates a large share of global port activity. For its developing economies, and above all for archipelagic states and the small island economies of the Pacific, maritime corridors are not abstractions on a map. They are the arteries of growth, food security, and energy supply. The most urgent governance challenge for these corridors is therefore not only how to keep goods moving, but for whom they move, and how their benefits and risks are shared across the economies that depend on them.
The region's trade is funnelled through a small number of narrow passages. The Strait of Malacca alone carries about 23 million barrels of oil a day, making it the busiest oil transit chokepoint in the world, and comparable concentrations exist along the sea lanes that connect East Asia to the Indian Ocean and beyond. This concentration delivers efficiency in normal times, but it also creates systemic exposure. When a single corridor is constrained, the shock propagates across the entire regional economy.
UNCTAD has been clear about who absorbs the heaviest burden. Small island developing states and the least developed countries, many of them in Asia and the Pacific, face the sharpest increases in the cost of imported food, fuel, and goods when a chokepoint seizes up.
Recent years have shown how quickly that can happen. The rerouting of vessels away from the Red Sea, sailing for weeks around the Cape of Good Hope, together with restrictions at the Panama Canal driven by drought, lengthened voyages, raised freight costs, and added emissions across global supply chains. UNCTAD has been clear about who absorbs the heaviest burden. Small island developing states and the least developed countries, many of them in Asia and the Pacific, face the sharpest increases in the cost of imported food, fuel, and goods when a chokepoint seizes up. UNCTAD estimates that if container freight-rate increases observed between October 2023 and June 2024 persist, consumer prices in small island developing states (SIDS) could rise by about 0.9 percent, with processed-food prices increasing by around 1.3 percent, compared with a global average increase of 0.6 percent. This vulnerability is compounded by the fact that maritime connectivity in SIDS has declined by around 9 percent over the past decade. Resilience in the corridors is, in the end, a development question as much as a logistical one.
The governance of these corridors has not kept pace with their importance. The prevailing framework is built to keep passage open, safe, and predictable, which is necessary but not sufficient. There is no comparable architecture for sharing the costs of navigational safety, environmental protection, and resilience, or for ensuring that the coastal and transit economies hosting the traffic capture a fair share of its developmental value. Closing that gap is the central task.
Cooperative arrangements among neighbouring economies, building on the regional bodies and joint mechanisms that already exist across Asia and the Pacific, can pool the costs of safety, environmental management, and security, and direct a fair return to the communities along the route, without raising new barriers to trade.
The first step is to treat corridors as shared infrastructure rather than as routes whose only duty is open passage. Open access and equitable benefit are not opposites, and both can be designed in together. Cooperative arrangements among neighbouring economies, building on the regional bodies and joint mechanisms that already exist across Asia and the Pacific, can pool the costs of safety, environmental management, and security, and direct a fair return to the communities along the route, without raising new barriers to trade. The right unit of governance is the corridor as a whole, not each gate along it. The Cooperative Mechanism for the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, established in 2007 as a practical implementation of Article 43 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, brings together Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, user states, and industry stakeholders to support navigational safety, environmental protection, and collaborative financing along one of the world's busiest waterways, carrying more than 100,000 vessel transits annually.
The second step concerns what happens onshore. A vessel that merely passes by is not development. A port that anchors processing, logistics, manufacturing, and employment is. Many developing economies in the region remain waypoints rather than centres of value, capturing transit but little of the wealth that flows past them. The dividend of connectivity comes from integrating ports with inland networks, industrial zones, and domestic supply chains, and from strengthening secondary ports rather than concentrating everything in a few large hubs. This is a matter of planning and finance more than of geography. India’s Sagarmala programme, launched in 2015, illustrates this onshore dividend by linking port modernisation with port-led industrialisation, industrial clusters, and stronger hinterland connectivity through rail, road, coastal shipping, and inland waterways, with the aim of translating cargo flows into greater domestic economic activity and employment rather than mere transit.
The dividend of connectivity comes from integrating ports with inland networks, industrial zones, and domestic supply chains, and from strengthening secondary ports rather than concentrating everything in a few large hubs.
The third step is to make decarbonisation equitable. The IMO Net Zero Framework, which aims for net zero shipping by around 2050, would for the first time combine binding fuel standards with a global price on emissions. Its adoption was deferred in late 2025, and a decision is now expected in 2026. How any pricing mechanism is designed will determine whether the transition is shared or simply passed down as another cost to developing maritime economies. Revenues should be channelled into green port infrastructure, the bunkering of alternative fuels, and capacity building across the region, so that smaller economies can compete in a low-carbon shipping system rather than be priced out of it.
None of this is affordable from public budgets alone. The Asian Development Bank has estimated that developing Asia needs about US$1.7 trillion a year in infrastructure investment through 2030, with transport among the largest components. Resilient ports and corridors compete for that scarce capital. Blended finance, multilateral development banks, regional pooling, and well-structured partnerships between the public and private sectors will all be needed, alongside the institutions and skills to plan and operate this infrastructure efficiently. Building that capacity is as important as building the assets themselves.
Revenues should be channelled into green port infrastructure, the bunkering of alternative fuels, and capacity building across the region, so that smaller economies can compete in a low-carbon shipping system rather than be priced out of it.
The test of ocean governance, in the end, is whether the corridors that carry the world's commerce also advance shared prosperity across Asia and the Pacific and the wider developing world, and do not leave the most exposed economies to absorb the risks alone. Framed this way, the imperatives of effectiveness and equity are not in tension. A corridor that serves everyone except the economies that host and depend on it is neither just nor, over time, secure. Turning maritime corridors from contested chokepoints into shared, well-governed development infrastructure is among the most consequential and achievable tasks before the region and the world.
Bambang Brodjonegoro is Dean and CEO of the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI).
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Bambang Brodjonegoro is the Dean and CEO of the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI). Before joining ADBI in April 2025, he was Special Advisor to ...
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