India’s government is pushing a $9 billion plan to build a megaport, airport, and city on one of the world’s most remote islands – a project that has drawn sharp criticism from environmentalists and advocates for indigenous communities who call the island home.
The development is targeted at Great Nicobar Island, a heavily forested outpost in the Indian Ocean that has remained largely untouched. The scale of the construction proposed there is hard to overstate: a major deepwater port, a full commercial airport, and an entirely new city, all carved out of terrain that NPR described as pristine.
Critics don’t dispute India’s right to develop the island. What they fear is the cost — to the forests that cover much of the land, and to the indigenous inhabitants whose lives and traditions are tied to it. Conservationists have warned that construction of this magnitude could permanently alter ecosystems that took centuries to develop.
The Indian government hasn’t publicly detailed how it plans to protect indigenous populations during or after the project. That silence has amplified concern among those watching the plan take shape.
Great Nicobar sits near major international shipping lanes, and the port is widely seen as an attempt to compete with regional rivals for cargo traffic. Whether the economic rationale holds up against the environmental and human costs is a question critics say hasn’t been answered – at least not publicly.
No timeline for groundbreaking has been announced, and no independent environmental review of the project has been made public as of early June 2026.
Reported by NPR. Read the original report.
