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ndia's iconic Western Ghats, inscribed by UNESCO in 2012 as a natural world heritage site, is threatened by population pressure, urbanisation and climate change, according to a new report by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). The IUCN World Heritage Outlook 3, published last week, builds on previous reports from 2014 and 2017 to track whether the conservation of the worlds 252 natural world heritage sites is sufficient to protect them in the long term. According to the 2020 report, the conservation outlook of the mountain chain of the Western Ghats, one of the worlds eight hottest hot spots of biological diversity, is of significant concern. If a sites conservation outlook is of significant concern, its values are considered to be threatened by a number of current and/or potential threats with significant additional conservation measures being required to preserve these values over the medium to long term. The report said while the state of world heritage values in the property was considered as good at time of inscription and appears to remain so, there is some concern regarding threats from outside the site.