Since the global crises in the 2000s, many foreign and domestic actors have acquired large tracts of land for food and biofuel crop cultivation and other purposes in Africa, often leading to the displacement of the African people living on customary land. The weak customary land rights of ordinary African people have been viewed as one of the main factors making it possible for various land-grabbers to exploit customary land with different purposes.

With over 14 million hectares allocated, Vietnam’s forest and forestland allocation has been one of the largest natural resource decentralization programs in the developing world over the last three decades. Given this remarkable achievement, critics are concerned about the low rates of household tree planting investment and question the roles and effects of land institutions on investment.

Land use has been demonstrated to have an important influence on PM2.5 concentrations; however, how the scale effects and regional disparities in land use influence PM2.5 concentrations remains unclear. This study investigated the scale differences in spatial variations in PM2.5 concentrations, in spatial associations between PM2.5 concentrations and land use, and explored the effects of the spatial heterogeneity and action scale of land use on PM2.5 concentrations. The main findings indicated greater intra-unit variation at small scales and greater inter-unit variation at large scales.