Tibetan livelihoods and the ＇Great Development of the West＇： Modernization, pastoral resources, and the ＇urban future＇ of the grasslands

I. Introduction Rural livelihoods in Tibet2 have, during the last fifteen years, undergone fast and profound processes of economic transformation and state-led modernization, both in the TAR and the Eastern parts of the Tibetan plateau. Local life styles have changed at a pace rarely seen in an area where people subsisted, until the late 1990s, almost entirely on nomadic mobile livestock production. New local socio-economic structures with peculiar characteristics have emerged.