The Western Ghats is one of the world’s most heavily populated biodiversity hotspots providing for and supporting 400 million people. However, these diverse freshwater ecosystems face many threats because of untrammelled economic development. In most instances the development planning process does not consider the requirements of these freshwater ecosystems, mainly due to a lack of adequate information on the distribution and status of freshwater species and the threats they face.

Biodiversity within inland water ecosystems in the Eastern Himalaya region is both highly diverse and of great regional importance to livelihoods and economies. However, development activities are not always compatible with the conservation of this diversity, and the ecosystem requirements of biodiversity are frequently not considered in the development planning process.