Preparing an action plan for the sustainability of universities: The example of TNKU

Humanity, by its very nature, needs constant progress and development. The fact that development includes practices that disregard nature have devastating effects on the globe, limiting economic growth and disrupting social justice when natural resources are faced with the danger of depletion. The concept of sustainable development, which has developed as a result of all these effects, prioritizes the basic needs of humanity, establishing economic growth on fair sharing, carrying out social progress within the framework of equality principles and providing this progress with a systematic management. Although it is not a place where sustainable development is directly targeted, settlements are areas where this progress can be observed concretely. It is considered that sustainability initiatives, that take a long time in cities due to the size of their scales and intricate structures, can yield faster results with the ease of planning-implementation-supervision of the campuses that show the characteristics of a small city. The fact that universities have different cultural characteristics necessitates sustainability practices to be institution-specific rather than standard. With this study, it is aimed to develop a sustainability action plan (SAP) for universities as an exemplary field in line with the United Nations development goals. Tekirdağ Namık Kemal University, which is at the very beginning of sustainability studies, was chosen as the study area. The study area was limited to Değirmenaltı Campus, which is the main campus of Tekirdağ Namık Kemal University, and office and field studies were carried out together. In addition to field studies, the concepts related to the subject were compiled by literature review, the natural, cultural and socio-economic characteristics of the study area were revealed by current situation analysis, and the university was evaluated according to the internationally accepted GreenMetric index. Attitudes, views and life practices of the campus users regarding their sustainability practices were investigated by a survey study. In the light of all these data, a sustainability action plan specific to TNKU has been developed. The SAP consists of 8 goals, 20 objectives, 35 strategies and 174 actions, as well as the units responsible for these actions and the suggested times for the actions to be taken. It is thought that this study will serve as a framework for universities, which are at the beginning of sustainability studies, to prepare their institution-specific action plans.