Satellites on fire: a new era of wildfire detection

Author: Urwah Mohammad Jawaid, UNCDD/G20 Global Land Initiative, Intern | May 5, 2026

Group of young people standing in two lines for a photo pose

Team behind the Satellites on Fire app
Photo credit: Satellites on Fire

Forests, wildlife and entire communities live at the mercy of wildfires. Every inferno begins the same way: a single spark, hidden deep in the wilderness. The search for a solution is at fever pitch as recurrent and ever intense wildfires spread across the world consuming cities, biodiversity, agricultural land and everything on their path.

Now imagine finding a solution faster than the best – North American Space Agency’s (NASA) – fire detection platform. On 31st March 2026, at ChangeNOW in Paris, that possibility took center stage.

United by purpose and passion, the top eight contenders of the Youth Ecopreneur Awards 2025 stood ready to present their most impactful restoration solutions. Seeking global recognition and the financial support needed to bring lasting change to the world’s landscapes, each one of them had climbed this far, dreaming of the win. But one start-up and its founder stood out more than ever: Satellites on Fire.

As bold as the name sounds, the mission behind it is even more ambitious. Satellites on Fire is a climate-tech start-up harnessing artificial intelligence and satellite imagery to detect wildfires early and stop them before they spread.

What began at the grassroots level in Argentina has now grown into a worldwide fire-detection network.

This is the story of a game-changing solution and of its Chief Operations Officer, Camila Saa, whose work has helped build a system that now operates at the forefront of disaster management in more than 20 countries.

The Road from Buenos Aires

Saa, born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, has a background in Business Administration and Finance. Personal experience deeply shaped her transition into climate innovation. The devastating wildfires that swept her homeland in 2020 showed her firsthand the extent of ecosystem fragility. Her friends, family and entire community suffered extreme losses. She realised then that help often reached them too late, as existing wildfire detection systems operated extremely slowly. Determined to bridge this gap between the problem and the solution, Saa joined Satellites on Fire as a founding team member.

While Saa focused on the business and strategic side, her counterparts on the founding team concentrated on technology and programming. They worked with experts from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop their proprietary model.

Their technology integrates artificial intelligence with satellite imagery that is updated every five minutes, tower-mounted cameras and weather forecasts to detect wildfires faster and more accurately than traditional systems. By bringing these data sources together on a single platform, Satellites on Fire provides a scalable and efficient early warning solution that supports rapid response and prevention. The platform is designed to:

Detect wildfires earlier and more accurately than traditional monitoring systems.
Pinpoint the exact location of fires and send real-time alerts.
Support faster response through direct notifications such as Short Messaging Service (SMS) and WhatsApp.
Make wildfire risk visible and accessible through a public app, helping communities stay informed and prepared.
Predict how the fires will spread.

Screenshot of an app showing South America

Screenshot from Satellites on Fire
Photo credit: Satellites on Fire

Protecting Communities, Ecosystems and Countless Lives

The project now operates in 21 countries and protects more than 56 million hectares of land. In 2025 alone, it helped authorities respond to over 600 wildfires, preventing the loss of life, forced displacement, biodiversity collapse and severe economic damage.

Internal performance metrics from Satellites on Fire show that the system detects ignitions an average of 35 minutes faster than NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS). In one case at an Argentine national park, the platform spotted a wildfire nearly two hours before traditional sensors, giving responders precious extra time to contain the flames.

Across LATAM, Satellites on Fire partners with fire services, companies and local communities to strengthen wildfire management and protect vulnerable landscapes. Many monitored areas include communities facing greater social and economic vulnerability, where wildfire damage can be especially destructive.

Beyond detection and response, the company also innovates in climate risk financing. Satellites on Fire has partnered with AON, one of the world’s largest insurers, to co-develop a parametric wildfire insurance product. The solution integrates the platform’s early alerts directly into the premium model and has already generated joint sales.

Screenshot from app showing fires around the world

Screenshot from Satellites on Fire
Photo credit: Satellites on Fire

Global Recognition and the Youth Ecopreneur Awards Journey

The Youth Ecopreneur Programme by the UNCCD G20 Global Land Initiative and the International Trade Center (ITC) champions young entrepreneurs restoring land and livelihoods around the world. The programme provides the tools, skills and support they need to grow their enterprises and accelerate their impact for people and the planet.

Drawn by the spirit of the programme, Saa joined with a sense of hope and excitement. She was eager to connect with other fast-track entrepreneurs, discover the ideas shaping their work and learn from the experiences they shared. What began as a promising opportunity soon turned into a defining milestone, as Satellites on Fire ultimately won the prestigious award. This recognition proved monumental, adding another hard-earned feather to the initiative’s rising wings.

However, this honour was no coincidence.

Satellites on Fire has also successfully closed an impressive USD 2.7 million seed funding round. Several other prominent initiatives have provided financial and strategic support as well, including the START Fellowship Investment Committee, the UN Green Climate Fund, 776.org through the 776 Fellowship and Mercy Corps Ventures through its Climate Resilience support programmes.

Numerous other awards and distinctions have also recognised their impact. These include winning the “Impact Apps” satellite solutions competition by Open Space, receiving a declaration of Scientific and Technological Interest from the Legislature of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, receiving the Comprehensive Award from the Swiss-Argentine Chamber of Commerce in the Companies category, winning Argentina’s National INNOVAR Competition and gaining recognition at both the Cornell University Climate Pitch Competition and the MIT & ITBA – 100K Latam competition.

Looking Ahead: Growth and Future

In just two years, Satellites on Fire has grown from a small team of four visionaries into a dedicated group of 26, driven by a shared mission to change how the world responds to wildfires. Today, the platform connects more than 55,000 users and serves 33 active clients including in Argentina, Guatemala, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Mexico, Ghana and the Philippines.

Every early alert means something profound: more time for firefighters to act, more time for communities to prepare and more time to stop the first flicker before it becomes a catastrophe. Those moments help protect lives, homes, livelihoods, forests, water sources, biodiversity and lands that carry deep cultural meaning.

As Satellites on Fire expands into new regions, its impact grows not just in scale but also in purpose. The platform plays a vital role in protecting communities and ecosystems.

In a world where wildfires are becoming more frequent and destructive, Satellites on Fire proves how the right combination of technology, urgency and human dedication can transform data from space into real protection for life on Earth.

Director's Message

The year 2024 was pivotal for the Global Land Initiative. Land degradation and restoration remained prominent on the global policy agenda throughout.

The UN Environmental Assembly, G7 Leaders’ Summit, G20 Environment and Climate Change Ministers’ meeting, and BRICS Leaders’ Summit addressed land degradation and committed to scaling up land restoration efforts.

The European Union passed a new Restoration Law mandating quantitative targets for land restoration. The UNFCCC, UNCBD and UNCCD Conferences of the Parties (COPs), held during the last quarter of the year, reinforced land restoration as a crucial solution to combat land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change.

Building on this favorable policy momentum, the Global Land Initiative continued to develop and deliver a robust program. In collaboration with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), we completed a database on Global Restoration Commitments by countries under the UNCCD, UNCBD, UNFCCC and the Bonn Challenge.

Representing a significant increase in global commitments since 2021, the total global commitment now stands at 1.2 billion hectares, with 30 countries, including 11 G20 members, pledging to restore over 10 million hectares each.

The UNCCD, with financial support from the Global Land Initiative, published the first global restoration economy international report, titled, Investing in Land’s Future: Financial needs assessment for UNCCD. The report defines the private sector’s growing role in land restoration and its potential for creating green jobs.

The study outlines key recommendations to support the growth of the restoration economy, which has an associated market survey valued at $37 billion globally, growing at 8.2% annually and is projected to reach $70 billion by 2031. Together, these studies stressed the need for focused policy action to encourage private sector investment and engagement in the restoration economy.

Working with the International Trade Centre (ITC), the Global Land Initiative launched the first cohort of the “Global Ecopreneurs Program,” training 100 young entrepreneurs from restoration startups. These entrepreneurs received training on improving business plans and pitching to investors. We plan to scale this program regionally to reach 10,000 ecopreneurs by 2029.

Training remained a cornerstone of the Global Land Initiative, with programs on the restoration of mining areas, of urban lands, of lowland-based systems, of drylands and with biosaline agriculture. These trainings consistently attracted more applications than available slots. To accommodate this high demand and broader participation, we also conducted online webinars on these topics, in English, Arabic and French.

The first University Curriculum Course on Sustainable Agriculture for Land Restoration was launched this year. It reached over 400 university teachers, with over 100 trained on implementing the curriculum. A university module on urban land restoration is in its final stages.

Representatives from 25 countries attended the second Global Changemaker Academy for Parliamentarians held in Bonn. With the European Union Restoration Law’s passage, global best practices can now be discussed and adapted to national contexts.

The Global Land Initiative’s visibility surged with participation in the G20 Environment and Climate Change Working Group meetings in Brazil, the COPs of the UNCBD and UNCCD and 7 other international exhibitions. In December, the Initiative, in partnership with Germany’s Federal Museum of Arts and Sciences, opened the Save Land: United for Land Museum Exhibition, the first museum exhibition on land restoration, which will run until June 2025.

Online engagement grew, reaching over 35,000 newsletter subscribers and over 14,000 followers across social media platforms, and a global reach of nearly 400,000. The Global Photography Festival, which attracted 17,000 entries from 154 countries, further boosted visibility.

The Global Restoration Information Hub was launched in July 2024. It is a compilation of globally available data on land restoration from credible sources. The site provides information on global best practices, restoration commitments, best practice legislations, documentaries, restoration actors and other databases.

The Initiative issued a global call for communities and NGOs to submit their restoration projects for small grant support, receiving over 600 submissions from 100 countries. Forty-one projects from XX countries were selected for funding.

[Statement on faith, if the faith report is finalized]

The G20 Global Land Initiative Steering Committee was kept informed of developments through regular communication. It met in July and continues to provide guidance on program implementation. It received the work plan for 2025-26; an exciting period of action is ahead.

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