Greenpeace Brasil and Planet Labs PBC launched Flying Guardians in 2024, converting a top-ten flight simulator into a real-time satellite tool for reporting
ARCHIVEGreenpeace Flying Guardians Turns a Flight Simulator Into an Amazon Defense Tool
Flying Guardians is a 2024 Brazil-based public interest campaign by Greenpeace Brasil, Planet Labs PBC, and agency AlmapBBDO that modifies one of the world's top-ten most played flight simulators to replace its original maps with live satellite imagery of the Amazon, enabling players to identify and report illegal mining and deforestation threats on Yanomami and Munduruku Indigenous territories.
The campaign's strategic foundation rests on a finding Greenpeace Brasil documented directly: in 2023, illegal mining destroyed the equivalent of 1,409.3 hectares across the lands of the Yanomami, Kayapó, and Munduruku peoples, a rate equivalent to clearing four football pitches per day. The same research indicates that approximately 26,400 hectares across these three territories are severely affected by illegal activities. These figures give Flying Guardians its urgency and its specificity — the campaign is not a general meditation on environmental degradation but a precise operational response to a documented, ongoing emergency in the Brazilian Amazon.
In practice, the mod functions as a tool for cyber-activism. When a player flies over environmentally protected rainforest territory, the game's standard landscape is replaced by updated satellite data supplied by Planet Labs PBC, a leading provider of Earth data and insights. Players can observe potential incident sites in real time, record the exact coordinates of threats, publish images directly from within the simulator environment, and sign petitions without leaving the game. The result is a seamless fusion of an entertainment platform that already commands a mass global audience with the operational infrastructure of environmental defense — making climate change awareness in Brazil an interactive and participatory act rather than a passive one. Clapboard Score: 84/100.
ARCHIVEGreenpeace Brasil identified a structural gap between a generation motivated to act on environmental issues and the traditional formats available for that action. Petitions, protests, and documentary content each address willing audiences, but none of them meet a mass gaming audience on its own terms. By choosing a hyper-realistic flight simulator already ranked among the top-ten most played titles globally, the campaign enters a space where sustained attention and high immersion are the default conditions — conditions that most public interest advertising cannot manufacture.
The integration of Planet Labs PBC satellite imagery elevates the campaign beyond novelty. Planet Labs PBC operates one of the world's largest commercial satellite constellations, providing frequently updated, high-resolution imagery of the Earth's surface. In a market context, the global satellite data services sector was valued at between approximately twelve and twelve-point-eight billion US dollars in 2024, with forecast compound annual growth rates ranging from sixteen to nearly nineteen percent over the coming decade, according to research cited by Insightauthority Wordpress and marketintelo.com. Within that expanding sector, Planet Labs PBC's involvement gives Flying Guardians access to data assets that competitors in the environmental communications space — including WWF Brasil and Conservation International's Brazilian programmes — cannot replicate without equivalent satellite partnerships. The campaign therefore occupies a technically differentiated position in the public interest category.
The environmental, conservation, and wildlife organisations market was valued at twenty-eight-point-one-six billion US dollars globally in 2024, representing growth of seven-point-four percent from the prior year, according to Mordor Intelligence. Within Brazil specifically, where the Amazon remains the central axis of the nation's environmental policy debate, Greenpeace's decision to anchor Flying Guardians in verifiable, coordinate-precise satellite data positions the campaign as evidence rather than advocacy — a distinction with meaningful consequences for how authorities and the public receive its reports.
Flying Guardians is built on the technical practice of game modding — a form of user-generated modification that alters or extends an existing title's assets, mechanics, or geography. In this instance, AlmapBBDO and the project's technical team replaced the flight simulator's proprietary cartographic data with satellite imagery feeds provided by Planet Labs PBC, creating a functional environmental defense game from within a commercial entertainment product. The craft challenge is considerable: satellite imagery must be formatted, georeferenced, and rendered at sufficient resolution to allow players to distinguish between intact forest canopy, active mining pits, and deforestation scars while flying at simulator altitudes and speeds.
The creative execution extends beyond the map-swap. The mod layers contextual information about the Yanomami and Munduruku territories directly into the simulator environment, so players encountering a suspected incident site receive cultural and legal background alongside the visual evidence. This editorial layer transforms what could have been a purely technical tool into a narrative experience — one in which the player understands not only what they are seeing but why the land they are flying over carries political and human significance. Ricardo Guerra, Planet Labs PBC's Director for Latin America, described the initiative as bridging the gap between the desire of a new generation to make a difference, the gaming world, and satellite technology, noting that Planet is proud to lead the charge in innovative projects and support Greenpeace in this exceptional endeavor.
The campaign also incorporated livestreaming as a distribution mechanic, generating what the One Club's 2025 award database records as three-hundred and twenty-five hours of livestreamed gameplay. Production credits for Flying Guardians beyond Ricardo Guerra's named role and AlmapBBDO's agency credit are not publicly documented in detail across available sources.
Flying Guardians produced verified, quantified civic outcomes. According to the One Club's 2025 award case database, players filed a total of 2,933 reports to authorities: 1,096 identifying illegal mining sites, 992 flagging deforestation areas, 608 documenting invasions of Indigenous lands, and 237 covering other categories of environmental threat. These figures represent concrete transfers of intelligence from a gaming environment to official enforcement channels — an outcome category that distinguishes Flying Guardians from the majority of public interest advertising, which typically measures awareness or sentiment rather than direct action.
The same One Club case record notes that 1,800 players became active participants in the campaign's reporting infrastructure, and that the initiative generated three-hundred and twenty-five hours of livestreamed gameplay, according to oneclub.org. The campaign earned a Bronze Lion at the 2024 Cannes Lions festival in the Brand Experience and Activation category, specifically within the Gaming-Led Brand Experience subcategory, as recorded by adlatina.com. In 2025, the One Club awarded Flying Guardians three separate Merit distinctions: one under Film and Video for Use of Gaming as a Tool, one under Gaming for Use of Gaming as a Tool, and one under Gaming for Gaming for Good, per oneclub.org. The campaign also received the Sustainability Best Practice Award in the Advertiser and Brand category for EMEA at the 2024 Campaign Ad Net Zero Awards.
No independent reviews from Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum, or Contagious are publicly available for this campaign. Structurally, however, Flying Guardians demonstrates that embedding a reporting mechanism inside an already-played entertainment product removes the activation barrier that undermines most digital petition campaigns — a design principle that its award record across multiple categories validates independently.
Flying Guardians is a 2024 Brazil campaign by Greenpeace Brasil, Planet Labs PBC, and AlmapBBDO. It modifies a top-ten global flight simulator, replacing standard maps with Planet Labs satellite imagery of the Amazon, enabling players to identify and report illegal mining and deforestation threats on Yanomami and Munduruku Indigenous territories to authorities.
Flying Guardians generated 2,933 total reports to authorities, according to the One Club's 2025 award case record. These comprised 1,096 illegal mining sites, 992 deforestation areas, 608 Indigenous land invasions, and 237 other environmental threats, all identified by players using Planet Labs satellite imagery inside the flight simulator modification.
Flying Guardians won a Bronze Lion at Cannes Lions 2024 in the Brand Experience and Activation category, specifically in the Gaming-Led Brand Experience subcategory, as recorded by adlatina.com. The campaign also received three Merit awards from the One Club in 2025 and the Sustainability Best Practice Award at the 2024 Campaign Ad Net Zero Awards.
Planet Labs PBC supplied the updated satellite imagery that replaced the flight simulator's original maps. Ricardo Guerra, Planet Labs PBC's Director for Latin America, described the initiative as bridging the gaming world, satellite technology, and a new generation's desire to act on climate change, positioning Planet as the campaign's core data and technology partner.
Greenpeace Brasil selected a flight simulator already ranked among the world's top-ten most played games to reach a mass audience on its own terms. The format provides high immersion and sustained attention, enabling players to observe real Amazon satellite data and file actionable environmental threat reports without leaving the gaming environment.
Greenpeace Brasil documented that illegal mining destroyed 1,409.3 hectares across Yanomami, Kayapó, and Munduruku territories in 2023, equivalent to four football pitches per day. The same research found approximately 26,400 hectares across those three territories were severely affected by illegal activities, providing the evidentiary basis for the Flying Guardians campaign.
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