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The rising temperature in the world's atmosphere is an outcome strongly linked to man-made manufactured interventions. Recreational activities in the form of tourism are such interventions that can unleash multidimensional negative externalities if not regulated properly. The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) region has become one of the major hubs for recreational activities in the last few decades. However, the region's tourism-led environmental degradation has received scant attention in the literature. As such, this paper unveils how tourist footprint affects the region's environmental sustainability and explores potential solutions to encourage the tourism industry to be more pro-environmental. We have used the novel GMM-PVAR technique to assess how globalization, transportation, green energy, and economic growth have affected the tourism industry and carbon footprint in the BIMSTEC region from 1990 to 2019. We lean on the empirical outcomes to propose regional sustainable tourism development policies. The GMM-PVAR model indicates that renewable energy, economic growth, and the transportation sector's development positively affect the tourism industry's growth in the region. However, globalization and environmental degradation negatively influence tourists' arrival. Contrarily, transportation services, economic growth, and tourism boost the carbon footprint in the region. Although globalization and clean energy reduce carbon footprint, these indicators are insignificant, indicating that this region is still lagging in renewable energy generation and failed to reap the positive spillovers of globalization. Based on these outcomes, we propose that the region redesign its tourism industry to encourage eco-friendly tourism by leaning more on pro-environmental strategies (i.e., powering the tourism industry through the penetration of renewable energies) and tightening environmental regulations., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)