Template for Submission of Scientific Information to Describe Areas Meeting Scientific Criteria for Ecologically or Biologically Significant Marine Areas Title/Name of the area: Important Coastal and Marine Biodiversity Areas of India

in less than 150 words) The coastal and marine ecosystems of peninsular India have been surveyed in detail to identify and prioritize the ‘Important Coastal and Marine Biodiversity Areas (ICMBA)’ for their better management, in addition to the existing Marine Protected Areas. This study followed the standardized global, national and regional level approaches to develop a criteria with several indicators which were later used to identify ICMBA sites in India. The site identification exercise began with six different targets that were often considered important features for safeguarding coastal habitats and their biodiversity. Conservation-related targets were picked up from standard global approaches and designated ‘conservation amplifiers’ because they improve the opportunities for consideration or simply allocate more weight to protection measures. The tool was developed with six different criteria as conservation amplifiers and 26 subunits as indicators or goals respective to each criterion A total of 350 potential sites were surveyed all along coasts of peninsular India, of these, 106 sites were identified and prioritized as ICMBA. Introduction Mainland India has a vast coastline of about 5423 km length spanning 13 maritime mainland states and union territories, with diverse coastal and marine ecosystems, supporting nationally and globally significant biodiversity. The coastline also supports almost 30% of its human population who are dependent on the rich exploitable coastal and marine resources. The coastline of the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea continues to be a rich fishing ground in the South Asian region, and India is one of the world’s largest marine product exporting nations. Marine ecosystems such as estuaries, coral reefs, marshes, lagoons, sandy and rocky beaches, mangrove forests and sea grass beds are all known for their high biological productivity, and they provide a wide range of habitats for many aquatic plants and animals. They also provide important food resources and innumerable ecological services to human beings. Therefore, sustainability of these fragile ecosystems needs to be our primary concern. Moreover, human activities such as destructive fishing, shipping, coastal development and discharge of untreated effluent from industries have caused considerable damage and pose a severe threat to coastal and marine biodiversity. In addition to these, global warming due to climate change also poses a major challenge to the marine biodiversity of India. It is known that there is a mosaic of habitats such as coral reefs, estuaries, intertidal mudflats, mangroves, backwaters, sand dunes, rocky shorelines, sea grass meadows and lagoons. But detailed studies on the coastal and marine biodiversity of the Indian mainland are lacking, and so these habitats and the biodiversity are represented poorly. It is obvious that the biodiversity is distributed widely among different associated habitats and conserving a single area would never support all the important species and ecological processes worth protecting. Furthermore, biodiversity can only be conserved by preventing habitat loss and by restoration. The importance of any single species in the functioning of an ecosystem may not be high, but protection of a mosaic of habitats will certainly preserve diversity