University academics urge authorities to reverse course on Dwejra lighting law

A group of 135 University of Malta academics have urged authorities to reverse course on controversial legal changes to how artificial lighting is managed at Dwejra, a Dark Sky Heritage Area on Gozo’s west coast.

Academics warned that the government’s recent draft Dwejra Protection and Management Regulations, which lay out when artificial lighting can be used at the sensitive site, risked “irreversible loss”.

The draft legislation, which opened for public consultation earlier this month, states that light on land at the site should be switched off between midnight and sunrise – a provision NGOs say clashes with existing rules banning artificial lighting in the area.

Academics stressed that by permitting artificial light until midnight, limiting restrictions to new lighting fixtures, ignoring existing lighting and invoking “ambiguous notions of ‘permanent’ lights”, the legislation “compromises the darkness that underpins the site’s scientific, educational, and cultural value”.

In a statement Tuesday, they described the legal notice as “particularly troubling”, while noting that it had been issued by the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA). Dwejra is a Natura 2000 site, afforded special protection by the EU.

“This approach contradicts the Gozo and Comino Local Plan, which designates Dwejra as a Dark Sky Heritage Area under Policy GZ-DARK-1. More broadly, it reflects a failure to recognise darkness as a cultural asset, not merely an absence of light.”

The group called Dwejra a “rare cultural and intellectual landscape whose value extends across multiple academic disciplines”.

“In a country increasingly dominated by artificial light and visual intrusion, Dwejra has remained one of the last places where the natural rhythm of night still survives,” the statement read.

Emphasising the site’s importance – not only to scientists, but to historians, anthropologists, educators and artists – academics warned the country, through the proposed legal notice, “risks eroding one of its last authentic night landscapes”.

Urging policymakers to reconsider the legal notice, the group stressed that for Dwejra to retain its importance, “artificial lighting must be excluded entirely”.

“Anything less represents an irreversible loss – not only to science, but to culture, history, and the collective human experience of the natural world.”

The legal notice caused outcry when it was unveiled earlier this month, with NGOs describing it as “a calculated assault on the last remaining dark site of the Maltese Islands, dressed up in green language to hoodwink the public” and “vandalising” the site.

The Gozo and Comino Local Plan states that Dwejra is a Dark Sky Heritage Area where “the installation of lighting, which is not related to aerial or maritime navigation, shall be strongly discouraged”.

Last year, 15 academics and NGOs called on authorities to enforce nighttime blackouts in Dwejra, highlighting that in recent years, enforcement against light pollution in the area had deteriorated.

Dwejra has been designated a Dark Sky Heritage Area for almost 20 years.