JOINT USE OF THE ELECTRE TRI AND KEMIRA-SORT MULTI CRITERIA DECISION MAKING METHODS TO PRIORITIZE THE EXPLOITATION OF NON TIMBER FOREST PRODUCTS PROVIDING SPECIES

The exploitation of non timber forest products (NTFPs), are the main source of income for rural populations in the Pô region of Burkina Faso. However, the potential of NTFP-providing species is not always exploited in a way that provides greater profitability for rural populations. This is mainly due to the fact that several criteria must be taken into account and aggregated in agreement with the various stakeholders. The aim of this work is to propose a prioritization of NTFP-providing species based on their ability to provide greater profitability for local populations. To this end, a proposition of a methodology based on the joint use of the KEMIRA-sort and ELECTRE Tri multi-criteria sorting methods to assign NTFP-providing species to ordered categories of profitability is made. The application of this methodology enabled to identify a median categorization made up of three categories of NTFP-providing species according to their profitability in the Pô area. The best category is made up of one specie (tamarind), while the second best category is made up of four species (shea, baobab, moringa, mango) and the last of five species (nere, detarium, jujube, resin and liana). The concordance of these results with the estimate of the expert, playing the role of decision maker, at the very start of our study, validate empirically the proposed approach, prefiguring its successful application to other context of multiple criteria sorting problems in the future (e.g. prioritizing areas at risk of the spread of a given disease in public health). Our approach also shows the complementary use of a total aggregation method (KEMIRA-sort) and an outranking method (ELECTRE Tri) in solving a multi-criteria sorting problem.