Environment
FEPAJ: Jalisco's environmental fund and its bet on co-funding
Jalisco created its environmental fund 16 years after Guanajuato, with a different design: open to NGOs and companies, and built to pull in federal and international money.
Bajío Ventures · January 2026 · Bajío environmental funds, 2 of 5
Jalisco arrived 16 years after Guanajuato, with a different design: a fund built to take in public and private money, open calls to NGOs and companies, and pool federal and international resources.
What FEPAJ is
The Fideicomiso del Fondo Estatal de Protección al Ambiente del Estado de Jalisco (FEPAJ) is a public trust under the state Environment and Territorial Development Secretariat (SEMADET). Its contract was signed on 5 October 2016, with Banco del Bajío as trustee and MXN 6.5 million in seed capital.
A 2016 reform of the state environmental law earmarked emissions-sticker revenue and testing-centre concession fees for the fund. The purpose: pollution control, mitigation, environmental offsets and vehicle fleet renewal.
Slow start, later adjustment
The fund launched with high expectations: SEMADET estimated in 2016 that it could raise up to MXN 200 million in its first year. Reality was more modest. Nothing was spent in 2016, and in 2017 the pool reached about MXN 12 million, including federal forestry money. The administration that took office in 2018 acknowledged that the fund had not been given enough resources.
The lesson applies to any state: a trust without a steady, earmarked inflow is just an empty account.
How it is governed
The 2018 regulation set three pieces:
- A technical committee that decides.
- A multidisciplinary advisory council that assesses projects proposed by sub-committees and presents them to the committee.
- A general director appointed by the governor from a shortlist of three put forward by the committee.
With support from German cooperation (GIZ, Mexican-German Climate Change Alliance), SEMADET designed open two-stage calls for NGOs and companies: first a concept note; then, for invited applicants only, a full proposal. Criteria include project logic, monitoring, co-benefits, innovation and sustainability after funding ends.
What it funds today
FEPAJ works more as a co-funding vehicle than as a municipal grant window:
- Air quality: prevention, monitoring and control, delivered with inter-municipal environmental boards (JIMAL, JICOSUR) and SEMADET.
- Fondo Verde: pools emissions-testing revenue, fines and environmental permit fees, plus agreements with ride-hailing platforms. It funds fleet renewal with KfW (the German development bank) through NAFIN, and vehicle scrappage.
- Biodiversity: FEPAJ and the Northern Region Inter-municipal Board (JINOR) set up community brigades to monitor golden eagles at their nesting sites.
Lessons from the model
Jalisco does two things Guanajuato does not: it opens the door to non-government actors, and it uses the fund as matching money to attract federal and international finance. The trade-off is less predictability for municipalities, which get no set annual amount. Inter-municipal boards partly solve this by pooling technical capacity that small municipalities lack.
Previous: Guanajuato’s FOAM. Next: Querétaro, where the fund is not a trust but a budget instrument with rules issued every year.
Sources: Jalisco Transparency — FEPAJ · SEMADET — Article 16-Bis, trusts · El Informador — Fondo verde, sin florecer (2019) · NTR Guadalajara — Publican reglas del Fondo Ambiental · IKI Alliance — Jalisco’s Environmental Fund and its calls · FEPAJ 2020 project sheet · Milenio — Fondo Verde (2023) · SIGA Jalisco — Biodiversity projects
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