In addition to the Environmental Impact Assessment process mentioned above, those projects located in forest areas or areas in which a forest could potentially occupy it, environmental authorities could require a Technical Justificatory Study, TJS (Estudio Técnico Justificativo, ETJ) for a land use change. According with SEMARNAT, the General Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection (Ley General del Equilibrio Ecológico y la Protección al Ambiente, LGEEPA) establishes in its Article 28 a list of works and or activities that require an EIS in order to be authorized and Fraction VII includes forestry land use change. In addition General Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection’s Environmental Impact Evaluation Regulation (Reglamento de la Ley General del Equilibrio Ecológico y la Protección al Ambiente en Materia de Evaluación de Impacto Ambiental) establishes in its Article 5, Letter O), Fraction I that land use change for agricultural, cattle, aquaculture, real state, urban infrastructure, communications infrastructure, commercial and industrial facilities with the exemption of family houses and commercial and services facilities in areas that does not exceed 1,000 square meters, when its construction does not consider the removal of trees in areas larger than 500 square meters or the elimination and or fragmentation of the flora and fauna habitat subject for a special protection regime in accordance with Mexican Official Norms and regulations will require an Environmental Impact Statement.

Experts that perform Technical Justificatory Studies (TJS) must be authorized by the PRODEFOR National Forest Register (Registro Nacional Forestal).

The experience of in the preparation of Technical Justificatory Studies for a Forest land Use Change is also wide and in general terms it is associated with the preparation of the Environmental Impact Assessment in order to optimize time and resources in the preparation of all necessary studies to be evaluated by the environmental authorities.

It i s important to highlight that based on the Agreement published by the federal Environment and Natural Resources Secretariat (SEMARNAT) on December 22nd, 2010 projects that include an environmental impact assessment evaluation procedure and a land use change evaluation procedure could also choose to prepare a Unified Technical Document (Documento Técnico Unificado, DTU) in order to evaluate and obtain in one single administrative procedure and if it is the case, the authorization for both procedures.