States do not just seek to manage affairs within their borders. They exist within a competitive, uneven and unequal and highly fragmented international system: shaping and shaped by what other states do through processes of inter-state diplomacy and by being bound, to different degrees, by the rules and procedures of regional and international institutions. The chapter builds an account of the geopolitics of transition from scholarship on political ecology and international relations as well as draws on insights from development studies to understand how countries’ developmental space and policy autonomy over pathways to sustainability is enabled and constrained by global ties of aid, finance and investment. The final part of the chapter explores entry points for transformation in the form of a realignment and rebalancing of politics and priorities in the global state. These include the prospects for shifts in the mandates and institutional configurations of major global governance bodies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, for the clearer articulation of transnational harm and liability for environmental negligence beyond state borders as well as rolling back regressive treaty arrangements which have been used to subvert sustainability transitions.