The trade-off between short-term economic growth and long-term sustainability in many cases makes it challenging for countries to commit to their public policies on sustainable development (SD). Vietnam, a developing country in South East Asia, presents an interesting case in point because of its fast growing, resource-based economy which confronts critical environmental obstacles and limited resources available to address such concerns. The country’s participation as a signatory member of the conventions established in the Earth Summit on Environment and Development has remained active over the last 25 years. Policies and institutions have been rectified to regulate and support SD in Vietnam ever since. However, the enforcement of such policies can still be significantly improved. This chapter investigates the implementation of public SD policies in Vietnam under an environmental economic approach. It is centred around the inter-relationship between two dimensions of SD: Economics and Environment. Particularly, it highlights the costly trade-off between rapid economic growth and severe environment pollution as well as the excessive disturbance to the environment due to flawed development plan(s). Despite strong commitment, backed up by an extensive legal and institutional framework, Vietnam has continued to procrastinate implementing SD policies. Simultaneously we contend that an important gap between policies and practices still remains in Vietnam’s pathway towards sustainability. In Section 2 a review of public policies is conducted to shed light on Vietnam’s orientations towards SD. In Section 3 some discussions on the trade-off between strong economic growth and relentless environment degradation are presented. Section 4 analyses a case study as evidence for an unsustainable policy at micro level in the largest rice bowl of Vietnam. Section 5 concludes the chapter with some policy implications.