The Indian Ocean is critical for China's economy and climate changes. Coral-based climatic and environmental changes can effectively prolong recorded time series, longer than instrumental records, because reef corals are widely distributed in the Indo-Pacific Ocean, their aragonite skeletons have an annual banding structure and are suitable for U/Th dating, and their geochemical records are reliable. In this paper, we first introduced the coral reef distribution in the Indian Ocean, and its current status and importance. Then, we reviewed coral-based past climatic and environmental change reconstructions based on four aspects including environmental pollution, paleo-storms, paleo-sea level variation, and climate changes (such as Asian monsoon, rainfall, atmospheric circulation, sea surface temperature, Indian Ocean Dipole, and ocean currents). We ended the paper with a summary and discussion.