Rapid urbanization and over-population on a global scale has led to a massive increase in consumption of resources and generation of waste. This led to severe environmental problems and increasing the importance of sustainable development, that can basically defined as "development for today's needs, without giving concessions on next generations' possibility of meeting their own needs."

On September 27, 2015, leaders of the United Nations Member States gathered for United Nations' Sustainable Development Summit in New York City, and agreed on eliminating all forms of poverty throughout the world and securing common welfare of the humanity by 2030, with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets at the core. This was an urgent call to action to eliminating poverty, preserving environment, combating climate change, safeguarding fair distribution of welfare and securing peace, at a global scale.

Universities assume a critical role in development of states and their welfare levels, and they also serve as a major stakeholder in assisting the actualization of the Sustainable Development Goals. On the other hand, with their large scale and populations, universities can be regarded as micro cities with direct and indirect impact on the environment. For this reason, it is imperative that the universities should integrate SDGs to their strategic planning and policies, and reflect these to their day-to-day operations.

As one of the leading institutions of higher education in Turkey, our university strictly follows the principle of being a sustainable university that works towards minimizing environmental, social and economic negative impact of its activities, offering a livable green campus, and leading the society in terms of sustainability. Within this scope, our campuses were thoroughly evaluated on the basis of setting and infrastructure, energy and climate change, management of waste and water resources, transportation and sustainability related education and research, and major improvements took place as a result of recent implementations. METU's moving its rank up from 151st in 2019 to 103rd in 2020, in Greenmetric UI rankings, which measures universities against sustainability and green campus applications, is also critical evidence in showing our University's improvement in these aspects.

In December 2020, METU sustainability website was introduced along with our University's first ever Sustainability Report and key sustainability performance indicators and activities were shared at sustainablecampus.metu.edu.tr, with the public. In addition, "Sustainable Development Module" was added to Research Information System (AVESİS) as a platform to improve the impact level and international visibility of activities such as publications, projects, and theses conducted by our researchers, in relation to SDGs (https://avesis.metu.edu.tr/sustainability).

Our efforts towards taking our place in World's leading green and sustainable universities will persevere, with our stakeholders.