Vol. 2, Issue 12, Part D (2016)

Abstract
Universities and Higher Education Institutions are primarily agents of change to achieve environment sustainability both within college campuses and beyond campuses in communities at large. There are numerous international organizations viz. GHESP, AASHE etc. Many nations have their own university sustainability organizations and many generalist university organizations include sustainability interest groups or activity streams. Government policies and international organizations have time and again marked the roles and responsibilities of HEI in promoting greater environmental responsibility. The Higher Education Sustainability Initiative aims to get institutions of higher education to commit to teach sustainable development concepts, encourage research on sustainable development issues, green their campuses, and support sustainability efforts in their communities and also to look into challenges of current times so we can build model sustainable universities, as the aim is to en-courage and promote the contribution of universities to the overall sustainability of the planet. This paper attempts to review and analyse the initiatives of various institutions of higher education to promote sustainability and focuses on overcoming the challenges and also devising ways and means of achieving it.