This is a key time to protect global forests. While pressure is still strong on many key global ecosystems, such as the Amazon and Borneo, the significant results of governments such as Lula’s in Brazil, as well as the ambitious vision of policies such as the recently enacted EU’s Deforestation-Free Regulation (EUDR), show that the devastating trend of deforestation of the past decades can indeed be reversed. Yet, a set of tools needs to be delivered to support this new wave of action to protect global forests, which has been triggered by raising awareness of the climate and biodiversity crises – a mix of social, economic and political, but also technological instruments. New technologies can indeed be a game changer in protecting global forests, if adequately understood and implemented: while some can significantly reduce the costs of once expensive activities, such as monitoring large territories, others can achieve what was otherwise impossible in the past, such as easily checking the origin of legal or illegal timber. It will be however necessary to address a series of obstacles – from a policy, legal, but also cultural perspectives – as well as to understand the interaction of such technologies with social and political aspects, for them to be fully effective.