The Western Ghats have been mapped and studied for over a decade, yet there is no consensus on how much of this landscape must be protected, and at what cost?

On July 27, the Union Environment Ministry issued its seventh attempt since 2014 to notify Ecologically Sensitive Areas in the Western Ghats — proposing 56,825 square kilometres across six states where mining, quarrying, thermal power plants and large-scale construction would be restricted or banned. That it has taken seven drafts tells its own story: a policy first proposed in 2011 remains, in 2026, still unresolved.

The stakes are not abstract. The Ghats are one of the world’s eight richest biodiversity hotspots, home to more than 7,000 species, and the source of the Godavari, Krishna and Kaveri River systems that sustain peninsular India’s........

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