Biodiversity Hotspots in India and the World

Biodiversity Hotspots: Concept and Origin

Biodiversity Hotspot Definition: Richness, Endemism and Threat

Three ideas sit inside the hotspot concept. The first is species richness, a very large number of species in a region. The second is endemism. An endemic species is confined to one region and found nowhere else, so when it disappears there it disappears from the world. Madagascar shows what this means in practice, since about 85 per cent of its plants and animals are found nowhere else. The third is threat, because a hotspot is also a region of accelerated habitat loss, where that endemic life is being destroyed.

The concept answers a practical problem. The number of species waiting to be saved from extinction far exceeds the money and trained people available for conservation. Hotspots tell conservationists where the same effort protects the greatest number of species that exist nowhere else. A place with many species that is not under pressure does not need that urgency, and a place under pressure with few endemics does not carry the same global loss.

Norman Myers and the Origin of the Concept

The concept was developed by Norman Myers (1934 to 2019), a British environmentalist who worked on biodiversity and on tropical deforestation. He wrote about hotspots in two articles in The Environmentalist, in 1988 and 1990. Conservation International adopted the hotspot framework as a way of setting conservation priorities in 1989.

In 2000 the concept was revised after a thorough analysis by Myers and others. It appeared as a book on the Earth's biologically richest and most endangered terrestrial ecoregions and as a paper in the journal Nature, which proposed that hotspots should be the focus of preservation efforts to cut the rate of mass extinction. Conservation International now designates the hotspots.

From 25 Hotspots to 36: How the List Grew

Initially 25 biodiversity hotspots were identified. Nine more were added later, which brought the total to 34, and the list now stands at 36. The two latest additions in the numbering are the Eastern Australian temperate forests (35) and the North American Coastal Plain (36).

Boundaries have moved as well. Indo-Burma once included the Himalayan chain and its foothills in Nepal, Bhutan and India. It has since been narrowed to the Indo-Chinese subregion, and the Himalaya is now a separate hotspot. This is why older books show different maps and different counts.

Criteria for Biodiversity Hotspot Status: Endemism and Habitat Loss

Two Criteria: 1,500 Endemic Plants and 70 Per Cent Habitat Loss

Since the revision of 2000, a region is recognised as a hotspot only if it meets two strict criteria, and both must hold.

1. Plant endemism: The region contains at least 1,500 species of vascular plants as endemics, which is more than 0.5 per cent of the world's total.
2. Habitat loss: The region has lost at least 70 per cent of its primary vegetation, so 30 per cent or less of the original cover remains.

The two tests answer two different questions. The first asks whether the region is irreplaceable, because those plants grow nowhere else. The second asks whether it is disappearing. A region rich in endemic plants but still intact fails the second test, and a badly damaged region with few endemics fails the first. In textbook language, hotspots are regions of very high species richness and a high degree of endemism that are also regions of accelerated habitat loss.

Why Plants Decide the Test

The test is built on plants because plants determine the primary productivity of an ecosystem, the energy base on which animals and people depend. In many hotspots people rely on species-rich ecosystems for food, firewood, cropland and income from timber, which is why damage to the vegetation is both the measure of threat and the cause of it.

Counting plants also gives a measurable yardstick. A region's endemic vascular plants can be counted and its lost vegetation measured, so the same two numbers can be applied to every candidate region. The method also has limits, since a count of land plants leaves out marine regions, animal groups and the cost of conservation.

Biodiversity Hotspots: Small Land Area, Most Species, Strict Protection

2.4 Per Cent of Land and Nearly 60 Per Cent of Species

The importance of hotspots lies in how much life they hold on how little land. Biodiversity hotspots host their ecosystems on just 2.4 per cent of the planet's surface, yet these sites support nearly 60 per cent of the world's plant, bird, mammal, reptile and amphibian species, with a high share of them endemic. Some hotspots support up to 15,000 endemic plant species.

The same regions have been badly damaged. The current 36 once covered more than 15.7 per cent of all land but have lost around 85 per cent of their area, and some have lost up to 95 per cent of their natural habitat. Only a small percentage of the land within hotspots is protected today.

Protecting Hotspots to Slow Mass Extinction

The strongest argument for hotspots is the arithmetic of protection. Although all the hotspots put together cover a small share of the Earth's land, the number of species they hold is very high, and strict protection of them could reduce the ongoing mass extinctions by almost 30 per cent. Myers proposed in the Nature paper of 2000 that hotspots should be the focus of preservation for exactly this reason, and hotspots became a funding strategy as well as a map.

Global conservation organisations adopted the strategy and have raised hundreds of millions of dollars for it, by some estimates the largest amount ever assigned to a single conservation strategy. The principal channel is the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund.

In India the same logic shapes policy. Ecologically unique and biodiversity-rich regions are legally protected as biosphere reserves, national parks and sanctuaries.

Biodiversity Hotspots in the World: List of 36 by Region

How Many Biodiversity Hotspots in the World: Count and Spread

The 36 hotspots lie mostly in the tropics, where most of the world's biodiversity exists, but the list also includes temperate regions, mountain systems and oceanic islands.

Africa and Southeast Asia with Asia-Pacific hold 17 of the 36 between them. South Asia has three, all shared with India. India's fourth, Sundaland, is listed under Southeast Asia because most of it lies in the Malay Peninsula and the islands of Sumatra, Java and Borneo; the list names it "Sundaland, Indonesia and Nicobar Islands of India".

Tropical, Mediterranean-Type, Mountain and Island Hotspots at Risk

Hotspots fall into four broad settings. Most are tropical, but not all.

• Tropical forests: The Tropical Andes, Mesoamerica, the Atlantic Forest, the Guinean Forests of West Africa, Indo-Burma and Sundaland.
• Mediterranean-type climates: The Mediterranean Basin, the California Floristic Province, the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa, the Chilean Winter Rainfall-Valdivian Forests and Southwest Australia, five hotspots in all. Each has its own shrub vegetation, called maquis or garrigue in the Mediterranean Basin, chaparral in California, fynbos in South Africa, matorral in Chile and mallee in Australia.
• Mountain systems: The Caucasus, the Mountains of Central Asia, the Tropical Andes and the Himalaya, where altitude stacks many habitats close together.
• Islands: Madagascar, the Philippines, New Caledonia, New Zealand, the Caribbean Islands and Japan, where long isolation has produced species found nowhere else.

Pressure differs from one hotspot to another. Some are losing their forest fast enough to lose most of their plant and vertebrate species if present rates continue. The hotspots losing forest fastest include the Caribbean Islands, the Tropical Andes, the Philippines, Mesoamerica and Sundaland; in the Caribbean, rapid deforestation in Haiti and Jamaica puts serious pressure on endemic plants and vertebrates. Hotspots in wealthy countries face different pressures. The islands of Hawaii, for instance, have many unique plants and animals that are threatened by introduced species and land development.

Indo-Burma is among the most threatened hotspots. It was one of the first places where people developed agriculture, often clearing land by fire, and tree plantations of teak, rubber and oil palm have since replaced large areas of lowland forest. Logging, mining and dam building add to the loss.

Biodiversity Hotspots in India: Himalaya, Indo-Burma, Western Ghats, Sundaland

How Many Biodiversity Hotspots in India: Four Shared Regions

India's four hotspots all cross its borders and are shared with neighbouring countries; in the case of Sundaland only the Nicobar Islands fall inside India.

Himalaya Hotspot: The Eastern Himalayas and the Indian Mountain Belt

The Himalaya hotspot is a mountain hotspot. Its eastern part, the Eastern Himalayas, extends from eastern Nepal across North-east India, Bhutan and the Tibet Autonomous Region to Yunnan in China and northern Myanmar, and the monsoon of June to September shapes its climate. The Himalayas as a whole span five countries: Nepal, India, China, Bhutan and Pakistan.

Altitude is what makes the range rich. Forest changes from tropical in the foothills to alpine pastures at the top, so many habitats lie stacked within a short distance. At high altitude the snow leopard is the main predator. Its prey includes the endemic bharal, or Himalayan blue sheep, and the Himalayan musk deer also lives there.

The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund invested US$5 million in the Himalaya hotspot between 2005 and 2010.

Indo-Burma Hotspot: North-East India and the Andaman Islands

The Indo-Burma hotspot covers 23,73,000 square kilometres of tropical Asia east of the Ganges-Brahmaputra lowlands. It begins in eastern Bangladesh and runs across north-eastern India south of the Brahmaputra, then takes in nearly all of Myanmar, parts of Yunnan, all of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, the vast majority of Thailand and a small part of Peninsular Malaysia. Offshore it includes Hainan Island and the Andaman Islands of India.

It holds 33 terrestrial ecoregions, from moist and dry broadleaf forests to coniferous forests and mangroves. On the Thai-Malay Peninsula it gives way to Sundaland, the boundary being the Kangar-Pattani Line. The hotspot holds almost 1,300 bird species, and the freshwater turtles are largely endemic and threatened by over-harvesting and habitat loss.

The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund invested US$9.7 million in Indo-Burma between 2008 and 2013 and US$15.8 million between 2013 and 2020.

Western Ghats and Sri Lanka Hotspot

The Western Ghats, or Sahyadri, run for 1,600 km along the west coast of India and cover around 1,40,000 square kilometres, through Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Together with Sri Lanka they form one hotspot. The range holds nearly 30 per cent of all the species of flora and fauna found in India, most of them endemic to the region, and at least 325 globally threatened species.

Endemic and threatened mammals include the lion-tailed macaque, the Nilgiri tahr and the Nilgiri langur. The Nilgiri tahr, once on the brink of extinction, recovered to an estimated 3,122 individuals in 2015. The region was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012. The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund invested US$6 million here between 2008 and 2015.

How to protect the range has been argued over since two expert panels, under Madhav Gadgil in 2011 and K. Kasturirangan in 2013, recommended declaring large parts of it ecologically sensitive.

Sundaland Hotspot and the Nicobar Islands

Sundaland is the hotspot of the Malay Peninsula and the islands of Borneo, Java and Sumatra. Its western and southern borders are marked by the deep Sunda Trench and the Indian Ocean, and its eastern boundary is the Wallace Line, which Alfred Russel Wallace identified as the eastern boundary of Asia's land mammal fauna.

During the last glacial period sea levels were lower and all of Sundaland was an extension of the Asian continent. As a result its islands are home to Asian mammals such as elephants, apes, tigers, tapirs and rhinoceros. The remaining primary lowland forest is known for giant dipterocarp trees and orangutans, and Borneo, Java and Sumatra served as refuges for plants and animals through several glacial periods.

The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund invested US$10 million in Sundaland between 2001 and 2006.

Megadiverse Countries, CEPF and Other Conservation Priorities

Megadiverse Countries: India as One of 17

A megadiverse country is one of a group of nations that house the majority of Earth's species and high numbers of endemic species. Conservation International identified 17 in 1998, all located at least partly in the tropics or subtropics. The main criterion is endemism at the level of species, genera and families, and a megadiverse country must have at least 5,000 species of endemic plants and must border marine ecosystems.

The 17, in alphabetical order, are Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, the United States and Venezuela.

India occupies only 2.4 per cent of the world's land area but holds nearly 8 per cent of global flora and 7.5 per cent of global fauna.

Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund: Grants for Hotspot Conservation

Hotspot conservation is financed mainly by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), a joint biodiversity conservation initiative of the Agence Française de Développement, Conservation International, the European Union, the Global Environment Facility, the Government of Japan and the World Bank. It was founded in 2000 and began awarding grants in 2001. Its headquarters are hosted at Conservation International in Arlington, Virginia.

CEPF awards grants to local and international civil society organisations working in hotspots. Since its start it has funded conservation projects in 25 hotspots across 105 countries and territories, and it has committed US$259 million to more than 2,500 civil society organisations. Its Donor Council decides which hotspots to invest in, and only hotspots that primarily include countries with developing or transitional economies are considered.

For each investment CEPF prepares an ecosystem profile, which identifies priority Key Biodiversity Areas and corridors; those become the specific places where grants go. Small grants average about US$15,000 and large grants about US$1,50,000. All four of India's hotspots have received CEPF investment.

Priority Schemes Compared: Global 200, Bird Areas and Key Biodiversity Areas

Hotspots are one of several priority maps. Others look at ecoregions, birds, sites and threatened species.

The idea of Key Biodiversity Areas extends the Important Bird Area idea to other groups of species, and the Alliance for Zero Extinction sites, Important Plant Areas and Prime Butterfly Areas are all examples of them. They are judged by two non-exclusive tests, vulnerability and irreplaceability, and the standard was published in 2016.

High-Biodiversity Wilderness Areas and the Last of the Wild

Conservation International's high-biodiversity wilderness areas are the mirror image of hotspots. Conservation International created the sub-classification in 2003 to identify regions where at least 70 per cent of the original vegetation is still intact, so that they are safeguarded and do not become hotspots. Five are listed. They are the Amazon Basin, the Congo Basin, New Guinea, the North American Deserts and the Miombo-Mopane Woodlands and Savannas.

The Last of the Wild, an initiative created in 2002 by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University, takes a different route, mapping human influence to find the places least affected by human activity. Hotspots, wilderness areas and the Last of the Wild together give conservation planners the picture of where to repair and where to keep intact.

Criticism of the Biodiversity Hotspot Approach

Limits of the Hotspot Approach: Cost, Evolutionary Diversity and Coldspots

The high profile of the hotspot approach has drawn four main criticisms.

• Cost ignored: Kareiva and Marvier (2003) pointed out that hotspots, and many other priority region sets, do not address the cost of conservation.
• Evolutionary diversity ignored: The approach does not consider phylogenetic diversity, the spread of evolutionary lineages among species.
• Areas outside the boundary: Concentrating resources on hotspots can overlook areas outside hotspot boundaries that still have high conservation value, which is why the same authors wrote about conserving "coldspots".
• Terrestrial plant basis: The 2000 analysis dealt with terrestrial ecoregions and was built on plants, so marine regions and groups other than plants are left to other schemes; the Key Biodiversity Area standard, for instance, has prototype criteria for marine systems.

Other critiques concern Key Biodiversity Areas themselves, such as the use of global data to set parameters for single regions, and limited involvement of local authorities in developing countries. The usual defence is that these tools are a focused response to a central problem in conservation, not a catch-all solution.

How Biodiversity Varies in India and How the Biological Diversity Act Protects It

Variation Across India: Zones, Hotspots and Endemism

India's biodiversity varies with climate, altitude and landform, and the pattern is easiest to see in the biogeographic zones and the hotspots. All of India falls in the Indomalayan realm except the high Himalayas, which fall in the Palearctic realm. A scheme by Rodgers and Panwar of the Wildlife Institute of India divides the country into 10 biogeographic zones and 27 provinces. The zones are the Trans-Himalaya, Himalaya, Desert, Semi-arid, Western Ghats, Deccan Plateau, Gangetic Plain, North-east, Coasts and the Islands.

The richest zones are the hotspot regions, the Himalaya, the Western Ghats, the North-east and the islands, while the Thar and Trans-Himalayan zones hold specialised life suited to dryness and cold. India has about 29,015 species of plants, including 17,926 species of flowering plants, and 6,842 plant species are endemic to India. Its estimated 92,873 species of fauna are about 7.5 per cent of those known worldwide.

Endemism differs sharply between groups. About 55.8 per cent of Indian amphibians and 45.8 per cent of reptiles are endemic, against 12.6 per cent of mammals and 4.5 per cent of birds.

Biological Diversity Act, 2002: NBA, State Boards and BMCs

The Biological Diversity Act, 2002, is the law for the preservation of biological diversity in India and for the equitable sharing of benefits from traditional biological resources and knowledge. It was enacted to meet India's obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

It works through three tiers.

1. National Biodiversity Authority (NBA): A statutory body at Chennai, established under Section 8 of the Act and set up in 2003. It facilitates and regulates access to biological resources and associated knowledge, the sharing of benefits and the notification of Biodiversity Heritage Sites.
2. State Biodiversity Boards: Constituted in 28 States and 8 Union Territories. Indian citizens and companies seek permission from the concerned State Board.
3. Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs): Constituted by local bodies under Section 41. Local bodies have constituted 2,76,653 BMCs and prepared 2,72,648 People's Biodiversity Registers, which record local species and traditional knowledge.

The BMCs are what turn national law into protection on the ground, including in the hotspots.

Access and Benefit Sharing, Heritage Sites and the 2023 Amendment

Access and benefit sharing is the Act's central bargain. A foreigner, a non-resident Indian or a foreign company needs the NBA's permission before obtaining biological resources or associated knowledge from India for research, survey or commercial use. Indian citizens and bodies corporate need permission from the State Biodiversity Board. The NBA may order benefit sharing, which can be joint ownership of intellectual property rights, transfer of technology, or monetary and non-monetary compensation.

State Governments can notify Biodiversity Heritage Sites, which are unique and fragile ecosystems, in consultation with local bodies under Section 37. The Act also carries penalties of imprisonment of up to five years, or a fine of up to ten lakh rupees, or both, and offences are non-bailable and cognizable.

The 2023 amendment shifted patent-related approvals to a registration-based system. Applicants covered under Section 7 must obtain a Certificate of Registration from the NBA before seeking an intellectual property right, including a patent, based on biological resources originating in India. The NBA received 1,077 such applications and issued 885 certificates between April 2025 and March 2026, against about 857 applications and 792 certificates in April 2024 to March 2025.

Kunming-Montreal Framework, 30 by 30 and India's NBSAP

The Global Biodiversity Framework and Target 3

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was adopted by the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity on 19 December 2022. It carries four global goals for 2050 and 23 targets for 2030. The goals cover the integrity and connectivity of ecosystems and the halting of human-induced extinction, sustainable use and nature's contributions to people, the fair sharing of benefits from genetic resources, and adequate means of implementation including money and technology, closing a biodiversity finance gap of US$700 billion a year.

Target 3, the "30 by 30" target, asks governments to designate 30 per cent of Earth's terrestrial and aquatic area as protected by 2030. To protect endemic biodiversity effectively, protected areas should be guided by key species-distribution patterns, which is precisely what hotspot maps show. The framework has also been criticised for vagueness and a lack of measurable indicators.

India's NBSAP and Commitments Under the Framework

India released its updated National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) on 30 October 2024 at COP 16 in Colombia. It is aligned with the framework, sets 23 national biodiversity targets, and aims to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, with a longer-term vision of living in harmony with nature by 2050. It stresses ecosystem restoration, species recovery programmes and community-driven conservation, including the restoration of degraded ecosystems, the protection of wetlands and the sustainable management of marine and coastal areas.

It is carried out through the three-tier structure of the NBA, State Biodiversity Boards and BMCs. India has also launched a National Red List Assessment initiative aligned with IUCN standards, with the goal of publishing National Red Data Books for flora and fauna by 2030.

Sources

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