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Top1. Introduction
Sustainability is one of the main concerns for most countries around the world and has been clearly evident in the global forum. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals which consist of 17 goals, supported by 169 targets and underpinned by 230 global indicators is one of the main indications that how sustainability is considered an important issue globally (UN SDGs, 2017; Umar et al.,2020; Umar, 2020). The United Nations aims to achieve these goals by 2030. One of the UN sustainable development goals is the quality education (Goals 4). Quality education can provide a strong foundation for sustainable development. Goal 4 (Quality Education) has a total of ten targets that the UN member countries want to achieve by 2030. These targets ensure that everyone has access to quality and affordable education of their desired. Such education may include basic education, vocational training and university level education (Lu et al., 2015). This is however, could not be achieved without promoting sustainability in universities and other educational institutions. Once the educational institutions will be able to use their resources in a sustainable way, their annual expenditure could be reduced and thus the reduction in the cost of operation will result in a reduction in the cost of education. This is however, appears not to be very simple and straight forward as there are still some countries around the world that are in the appraisal stage of sustainability. For instance, Umar and Egbu (2018-a), while discussing UN SDGs, argued that although most of the countries have submitted their intended action plans to achieve these goals, there are still few countries who are still in the appraisal stage of their plans and have not yet submitted it the UN. While it is now 5 years since the UN has adopted the SDGs, none of the countries is on track to achieve all of these goals by 2030 (Sachs et al., 2019). This is quite a serious situation as we are closed to the target and if these goals would not be achieved then it will have an impact on the UN millennium goals (UNMGs, 2019). The universities however, have an important role to play to achieve these goals, but the universities first have to integrate sustainability in their local environment and in teaching and research (Beynaghi et al., 2016). It is a universal fact that the way the earth resources are utilized these days is considered as non-sustainable. If all the 7.3 billion of Earth’s people consumed the earth resources at the same rate as the average American, it would take six planets to support them (Kibert, 2016). Individuals’ contributions and organizational commitment are considered significantly important to achieve a desired level of sustainability. There is a global need to propose a more suitable integrated approach to achieve sustainability at educational institutions that could remedy the limitations of the current environmental management practices. This article puts light on the approach of sustainability and highlights the need for universities to be sustainable. The article further describes some of the key aspects of achieving sustainability at a university by proposing an integrated approach. There is a possibility to achieve more sustainability through the integration of three strategies, namely; university environmental management system (EMS); public participation and social responsibility; and promoting sustainability in teaching and research. The next section sheds light on the background of sustainability in higher education institutions.