Pakistan can overcome impending water scarcity challenges by adopting proper and timely strategies besides enhancing its reservoirs and reducing water losses in the country, water experts said at a two-day conference which began here on Tuesday. The national conference on Water Shortage and Future Agriculture Challenges and Opportunities has been organised by Agriculture Foundation of Pakistan in collaboration with Pakistan Science Foundation and Pakistan Agriculture Research Council. The rapid change in climatic components and water shortage was becoming a serious challenge to agriculture, they added. The speakers were of the view that, being arid country, it has become imperative for country's scientists to develop strategies to cope with changing environment and reduce availability of irrigation water to produce enough food and cash crops for meeting the requirement of rapidly increasing population. Speaking as chief guest, former Chief Minister, NWFP, and Former Chairman Wapda, Shams-ul-Mulk said the water issue has become so complicated which needs to be addressed instead of doing politics on it. "Water is a matter of survival and no politics should be done on it as we are already late to do politics on the issue," he remarked and said that Kalabagh dam was more important for NWFP than any other province of the country. He stressed the need for constructing dams, saying that currently there were two crisis at global level ie energy and food crisis and both have linkage with dams. Moreover, he also stressed the need for removing the seasonal imbalances in water distribution to have maximum utilisation of the resources. In his detailed keynote address, Project Co-ordinator Asian Development Bank, Shahid Ahmed presented an optimistic view of water resources in the country however stressed the need for proper management to overcome challenges. He said that Pakistan was lagging far behind in storing water, which should be matter of concern and highlighted the need for improving the secondary canal system to decrease water losses. He said that absence of conducive environment to introduce water efficient irrigation techniques, inadequate and ineffective participation of private sector, deteriorating institutional capacity of key water sector institutions were the problems which needed to be addressed for ensuring economic use of water. Speaking on the occasion, Director General NARC Dr Zahoor Ahmed said Pakistan did not manage water resources which lead to water scarcity in the country. He said that the country was storing only 9 percent of water flow against 44 percent stored in other parts of the world, adding that innovative and modern techniques must be adopted to make country water secure. Chairman of the Organising Committee, Altaf Hussain Chaudhry, speaking on the occasion, said that the purpose of the seminar was to create interaction between farmers and agriculture researchers to share knowledge and expertise.