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In the EU, water bodies are used for a variety of economic activities, among which navigation for trade and transportation, agricultural and industrial processes involving water abstraction, hydropower production, extraction of minerals as well as aquaculture. From the assessment of status, pressures and impacts on European waters (EEA, 2018), it is evident that the driving forces behind the achievement or non-achievement of good status are activities in economic sectors. Recent policy reviews have shown that there is still much scope to further mainstream environmental policy actions into sectors to reduce the driving forces behind aquatic biodiversity loss (Rouillard et al., 2016).

We need to ensure that economic sectors drawing on substantial water use adopt management practices that can keep water ecosystems healthy and resilient. Managing water in a green economy means using water in a sustainable way in all sectors and ensuring that ecosystems have both the quantity and the quality of water needed to function (EEA, 2018).

Principles of sustainable water management have already been introduced in some sectoral activities and the WFD has played an important role in taking up sustainability aspects. Several sustainable sector strategies have been developed in the last 10-15 years to promote the growth of a particular economic sector, while drawing out a roadmap (or guidelines) for reducing pressures and impacts of the sector’s activities on water resources. In the following, a number of good practice examples illustrate how sustainable water management solutions can work in sectors.