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Environment › Protected areas and habitats

Marine and coastal ecosystems

Coasts and seas as ecosystems: mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass, estuaries and lagoons, coastal regulation and erosion, marine protected areas and the treaties for the high seas. Prelims has asked what blue carbon is and where India has coral reefs.

UPSC has asked

  • Prelims 2026: why mangroves matter for climate resilience
  • Prelims 2018: coral reefs
  • Prelims 2016: The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB)
  • Prelims 2014: where India has coral reefs

Showing 1 of 7 subjects, those that changed from 1 to 15 August 2026.Show all

Great Nicobar project

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Prelims and Mains

The project on the 921 sq km Great Nicobar Island comprises a transshipment port at Galathea Bay, a greenfield airport, a power plant and a township. The island is a biodiversity hotspot and is seismically active, having subsided in the 2004 earthquake. Island coasts are zoned under the Island Coastal Regulation Zone framework, in which category IA is the most restrictive.

What changed

  1. 7 Aug 2026Updatenewly added

    • Minutes of the project's biodiversity committee identify four sites on the west coast for moving giant clams and coral colonies out of Galathea Bay, a condition of the port's coastal clearance.
    • The Zoological Survey of India records a reef of 116 hectares with more than 100 species of reef building coral in the bay, while the coastal maps published in 2023 by the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management show no coral there.
    • A site with coral reef falls in the most protected coastal category, where a port cannot be built. The submission that the bay is a lower category was central to the National Green Tribunal dismissing objections in February 2026.

    Mains: a mapping decision, and not an environmental argument, settled what the project may legally do.

    Frontline, 7 Aug 2026: The coastal zone maps that cleared the Great Nicobar port show Galathea Bay as free of corals, while the Zoological Survey of India is planning to translocate the corals that are there. (opens in a new tab)

  2. 7 Jul 2026New subject

    • Clearance has been sought for a fortified lighthouse, a convention centre and a museum at Indira Point, India's southernmost point, which lies just south of Galathea Bay.
    • The site falls in Island Coastal Regulation Zone IA and IVA. Category IA permits almost no construction, with narrow exceptions such as defence and public utilities after a detailed impact assessment.

    Mains: a series of individually small clearances adds up to a large ecological change on one stretch of coast.

    The Indian Express, 7 Jul 2026: Construction proposed at Indira Point, India's southernmost point, in the strictest island coastal zone category (opens in a new tab)

Also filed elsewhere