Punjab Minister for Literacy and Non-formal Basic Education, Syed Hussain Jahanian Gardezi said implementation of water vision of President Pervez Musharraf was imperative to save the country from water crisis and food shortage.
Addressing a two-day international seminar on 'Water and Environment-a looming crisis' at University of Agriculture Faisalabad, the minister said food security would remain a far cry without building big water reservoirs for irrigation purposes.
Faculty of Agriculture Engineering and Technology of the UAF had organised this seminar. Gardezi emphasised the need to take appropriate steps to meet the future challenges. Hussain Jahanian further said in China there are 59 big dams, in Japan 35, in Iran 28, in Turkey 22 and in India six but only two such dams are in Pakistan, which are insufficient to cater to our needs.
Earlier, UAF vice chancellor Professor Dr Bashir Ahmad said Pakistan being an agricultural land was totally dependent upon water. Despite having a versatile climate, the country is still looking for new alternatives of water for power and agricultural demands, he maintained.
He said water shortage occurs almost exclusively in developing countries, which are ill equipped to adopt any policy and technological measure needed to address the crisis. The VC said by the year 2025, one third of the world's population is expected to face severe and chronic water shortages.
Dr Shahbaz Khan from Charles Sturt University, Australia in his keynote address highlighted the main features of water and environmental issues. He said human activities and industrial products and by-products often contaminate the world's limited fresh water resources thus threatening the quality of groundwater as well as the surface water, making them unavailable for further human use.
Faculty of Agriculture Engineering and Technology Dean Professor Dr Jehangir Khan Sial thanked the guests and hoped this seminar would be helpful to attain prosperity and food security. Muhammad Azeem conducted the seminar in which a large number of faculty members of UAF and students participated.