LAHORE    -    The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) Pakistan celebrated World Environment Day 2023 by or­ganising a capacity building workshop for media and highlighting the role of water governance in fostering pros­perity and sustainable development in Punjab. The workshop was organ­ised under the UK Aid-funded Water Resource Accountability in Pakistan (WRAP) Programme Component 1: Climate Resilient Solutions for Improv­ing Water Governance (CRS-IWaG) led by IWMI, through which water gover­nance reforms will be introduced in Punjab and at the federal level. Speak­ing on the occasion, Dr. Mohsin Hafeez, Director - Water, Food and Ecosys­tems, IWMI, and Team Leader, WRAP Programme Component 1: CRS-IWaG, informed the media that with increas­ing impacts of climate change, Punjab is experiencing unpredictable rainfall patterns, which is increasing reliance on groundwater resources. He sug­gested, “Through climate-smart inter­ventions, IWMI Pakistan aims to guide farmers, industrialists, urban water users, and other stakeholders on sus­tainable water use, so that water scar­city can be addressed.” Dr. Hafeez also gave an overview of the implementa­tion progress of Punjab-specific inter­ventions introduced under the WRAP Programme Component 1: CRS-IWaG. It includes the implementation of a ro­bust capacity building programme for government departments and other stakeholders at provincial and district (Okara) level; installation of Conduc­tivity, Temperature and Depth (CTD) automated groundwater divers and soil moisture sensors in Okara for ground­water monitoring and assessing crop water requirements respectively; de­velopment of Water Accounting (WA+) and Irrigation Demand Management (IDM) framework, geotagging of groundwater monitoring sites for pi­ezometer installation in Okara through Principal Component Analysis (PCA).