<p>South Asia is a climate change-vulnerable region which comprises several countries that are often at high risk of experiencing climate change-induced socioeconomic and environmental problems. Therefore, this study evaluates whether developing internet-based infrastructure and enhancing internet accessibility rates across this region can enable selected South Asian countries to reduce their annual carbon footprint levels in due course. Besides, the internet development-carbon footprint nexus is examined by adopting both linear and quadratic panel data modelling approaches, particularly for exploring how different phases of internet development may impact carbon footprints across South Asia. Overall, for the entire panel of South Asian countries, empirical results show that internet development initially enhances carbon footprint levels. But the results also endorse that once the chosen South Asian countries ensure that around half of their respective populations are using internet services, further internet accessibility improvement can enable these countries to reduce their carbon footprints. Accordingly, the internet development-carbon footprints nexus is deemed to be inverse U-shaped. Thus, these findings stress the importance of sustainably enhancing internet penetration rates so that the chosen South Asian countries do not lag behind the threshold level of internet development beyond which a complementarity between internet development and carbon footprint reduction can be established. Among other key findings, financial globalization is found to account for higher carbon footprints, which, in turn, affirms the pollution haven hypothesis. Conversely, consuming renewable energy instead of fossil fuels is found to exert carbon footprint-reducing impacts across South Asia. However, the above findings are heterogeneous when analyses are conducted separately for South Asian countries with relatively low, moderate, and high annual carbon footprint levels. For instance, the inverse U-shaped nexus between internet development and carbon footprints is verified only for relatively more polluted South Asian countries. Besides, the development of financial markets and institutions is witnessed to exert carbon footprint-surging effects, mostly for the relatively more polluted countries from this region. Furthermore, irrespective of the relative pollution levels, renewable energy transition, urbanization, and good governance are found to be associated with lower carbon footprints, albeit the magnitudes of these impacts vary across the three different pollution cohorts considered in this study. Therefore, the aforementioned findings can be regarded as critically important for South Asian policymakers to design mechanisms through which economies from this region can be made more climate change-resilient in the future.</p>