The 2019 Global Forest Watch (GFW) Summit, held in Washington DC this week, opened with a retrospective on how deforestation monitoring systems have matured since their broad development in the early 2010s. Several Latin America countries have their own dedicated system. While many African and Asian countries have not yet created dedicated systems, they have come a long way in deforestation monitoring. Efforts such as Global Forest Watch, CIAT’s Terra-i system, and others are mature, providing near real-time data that can help governments, NGOs, the private sector, and others monitor and track deforestation across the world.