Politiques pastorales et transformations de l’élevage des yaks sur le plateau tibétain : l’intégration au marché peut-elle apporter une solution à la dégradation continue de la steppe ?

The Western Region, a new area for development in China, faces tremendous environmental, economic and social challenges. During the last six decades, a succession of policies has transformed the production systems and had a profound impact on the environment of the region, and has resulted in a huge diversity of local situations. Yak breeding on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has been chosen to illustrate this diversity and the different perspectives that emerging markets are opening to this very fragile pastoral area. Based on documentation, field inquiries carried out in herders’families and interviews with consumers in supermarkets in major cities, the article analyses the evolution of yak livestock production systems. In the discussion of the results, cooperation between stakeholders appears to be indispensible for building sustainable development. However, asymmetries between actors limites the extent of participation, a situation that threatens the sustainability of the current development trends.