The David and Lucile Packard Foundation is committing $5 million to the new South America Fire Fund (SAFF), a three-year effort aiming to raise $100 million to test what works to reduce destructive fire across critical landscapes in South America.
Led by Renaissance Philanthropy and Conservation X Labs, the Fund is anchored by a $30 million commitment from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. It will initially work across six landscapes in Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru, spanning the Amazon rainforest, the Pantanal wetland, and the Chiquitano dry forest.
A Different Approach to Destructive Fires
Protecting tropical forests is one of the most powerful and immediate ways to slow climate change. Each year, tropical forests absorb about 10 percent of global carbon emissions. They also regulate weather patterns and provide clean air and water for hundreds of millions of people.
But destructive fires are putting these ecosystems and the people who depend on them under growing pressure. In 2024, fires were the leading cause of tropical forest loss for the first time in over twenty years of available data. And across the Amazon, Pantanal, and Chiquitano, an estimated 28 to 34 million hectares burned that year – roughly the size of Arizona.
Fires can also create a damaging cycle: burning degrades forests, and degraded forests become more vulnerable to future fires. Hotter, drier conditions can make fires more intense and harder to control.
Reducing that threat requires more than fighting fires once they start. It means preventing destructive fires where possible, detecting them earlier, strengthening response capacity, and improving the information and coordination needed to act.
Learning What Works Across Different Landscapes
SAFF will test three strategies together across six landscapes:
- Prevent destructive fire and reduce vulnerability by supporting practices that make landscapes less likely to burn.
- Detect and respond to fires earlier by strengthening rapid response.
- Improve information and decision-making by giving communities, fire brigades, and public agencies better tools to make decisions.
The landscapes were selected because they face significant fire risk, have experienced partners on the ground, and offer the ability to measure results. They are also intentionally different landscapes, allowing SAFF to test how approaches perform under varied conditions rather than assume the same solution will work everywhere.
Organizations with deep experience in each place lead the work. SAFF adds resources, technology, and opportunities to share learning across places and national borders.
Building Data Sovereignty From the Start
The Foundation’s grant specifically supports SAFF in more deeply integrating data sovereignty principles into its data governance from the outset.
Data sovereignty is about who has a say in how information about lands, livelihoods, and communities is collected, accessed, shared, and used. Establishing those principles early can help ensure that new data systems strengthen local agency and decision-making rather than simply extract information or concentrate control elsewhere.
Better data alone is not enough. It needs to be accessible and useful to the communities, brigades, agencies, and other institutions making decisions on the ground.
“The future of wildfire prevention isn't about finding one breakthrough technology; it's about building a system that can learn."
“The future of wildfire prevention isn’t about finding one breakthrough technology; it’s about building a system that can learn,” said J.R. Littlejohn, vice president of Environment and Science. “SAFF brings together technology, local knowledge, finance, and on-the-ground experience to understand what works, what doesn’t, and how we can use those lessons to strengthen wildfire prevention over time.”
Technology and Data That Support Local Decision-Making
Technology, from satellite detection and communications to sensors and decision tools, can help people act earlier and with better information. Because these tools are part of what SAFF is testing, how information is governed matters, too.
SAFF is building data sovereignty principles into how it manages data from the start. Data sovereignty is about who has a say in how information about lands, livelihoods, and communities is collected, accessed, shared, and used. Building those principles in early can help ensure that new data and technology strengthen local decision-making.
Success depends on how well these tools support the people and institutions already working to prevent and respond to fires — and how well the pieces work together. If the approach proves effective, lessons from these six landscapes could help inform future efforts to reduce destructive fires at greater scale.
