Climate change has been debated from scientific, political, educational and development perspectives, shaping international policy architecture. In this review we explore international policies through a cross-country comparative analysis of climate change and higher education policies in Brazil, Fiji and Kenya. Policy movement can occur through policy transfer, borrowing, translation or learning that takes place over the course of a country’s policy cycle. Of these forms of movement, we argue that policy learning provides the most contextualised type of policy movement, as it is the most socially oriented. We suggest that integrated approaches to policy are necessary in order to achieve a socially oriented policy cycle. By analysing the vertical and horizontal scales along which the policy cycle unfolds, we show that there is a problem of integration along both of these dimensions in each of the three countries. This limits opportunities for policy development and enactment in Brazil, Fiji and Kenya, as integration links decision-making actors and actors with influence, as well as the main target groups of policies. We argue that better integration can be achieved through a move away from top-down approaches towards approaches that take advantage of the positioning of actors which facilitate integration in ways that bring non-traditional actors into the policy cycle. Because they straddle both the macro and meso levels in ways that may link decision-makers, influencers and target groups, higher education institutions (HEIs) are a good example of such actors. They possess the ability to engage both traditional and non-traditional actors and can do so by mainstreaming climate change and higher education policies in ways that draw in traditional, cultural and indigenous forms of knowledge. Following a cross-country comparative analysis, the discussion explores connections and disconnections in policy, asking where and how HEIs and actors were involved in policy development or enactment, where opportunities may have been missed, and what drives or hinders meaningful policy development or enactment in relation to climate change. We argue that the cases of Brazil, Fiji and Kenya generate useful insights into the changing fabric of institutional arrangements in these countries, yet the rigidity of relations along the horizontal and vertical scales makes it difficult for new or innovative institutional arrangements to arise between macro, meso and micro actors.