Vietnam's economic recovery following the global economic crisis in 2008 presents a once-in-a-lifetime chance to investigate the links between economic expansion and environmental pressure. Here, we display the trajectories of Vietnam's environmental pressure throughout the years 2008 to 2018 and identify the underlying socioeconomic driving factors through input-output and forward-backward linkage analysis. Decoupling index (DI) and input-output analysis (IOA) indicated that mining, the extraction, and use of fossil fuels, as well as energy generation for daily life and manufacturing industries, are the primary contributors to rising environmental pressures (DI; forward and backward linkage values > 1). Vietnam has generally achieved negative decoupling between environmental pressure and economic growth, even though absolute decoupling has not been reached. Vietnam's decoupling performance has four distinct phases, closely correlating with economic structure in input-output analysis, and nationwide key policy revisions, indicating a strong impact of Vietnam's national socio-economic policies on its environmental pressure. However, mineral and fossil fuel depletion; climate change in the long – short- term, and water stress indexes (the ratio of total annual freshwater withdrawal to hydrological availability) were high with 456.91%; 55.91%; 54.43%; 41.87%; and 30% increase from 2008 to 2018. Through the analysis results from the study, it can be concluded that the change in economic structure and resource exploitation has achieved economic recognition. However, it also entails serious environmental problems and ecological degradation.