Localizing a Right to Night: Norm framing and grafting in subnational dark skies governance

Efforts to comprehensively protect dark skies and address artificial light at night (ALAN) are complicated by differing contexts, motivations, and community values. Acknowledging this diversity, we examine how emergent global and nonstate ALAN governance schemes are localized in municipal contexts. Using original qualitative analysis, we examine eight communities in Colorado, USA that received International Dark Sky Community certification, exploring how individual communities use “framing” and “grafting” to localize global ALAN considerations. Our findings indicate deeply heterogeneous motivations and mechanisms for the localization of ALAN governance, despite similar policy outcomes. At the same time, we observe the widespread resonance of dark skies’ local values, sensitivity to their global import, and influence of nongovernmental certification schemes. Ultimately, our project supports a richer understanding of why communities adopt dark sky protections, underscores subnational and nonstate actors as key participants in multiscalar dark sky governance, and affirms the necessity of examining subnational dark skies regulation as an important facet of broader earth-space governance.