ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Clim.
Sec. Climate Risk Management
This article is part of the Research TopicClimate Change, Risk Perception, and Healthy Environment ManagementView all 5 articles
Farmers' Perceptions of Climate Change, Its Impacts and Corroboration with Meteorological Data in rural Cameroon: Evidence from Muyuka Subdivision
Provisionally accepted
- University of Buea, Buea, Cameroon
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Climate change remains one of the eminent challenges affecting rural livelihoods and systems. Inversely, most considered issues of climate manifestations are often one tailed-more national or international than at the local with the low consideration of the voices and knowledge perceptions of the local populations. This study sought to investigate farmers perceptions of climate variability/change, its impacts on their farming and assess whether these perceptions corroborate with Meteorological data within the Subdivision. As a cross-sectional study, we employed the purposive sampling and the simple random sampling to select the study units and elements for the study. Primary data was collected using the questionnaire which consisted of both open-ended and closed-ended questions. Secondary data was collected from the meteorological stations, library and internet sources. Results revealed that Farmers had much knowledge and awareness of climate variability with 83% noting increase in current temperatures which corroborated with meteorological data evidence especially with significant change in Maximum temperatures over the subdivision. Meteorological data clearly revealed that for the period considered, there has been much variability in temperature and rainfall and a significant increase in annual maximum temperature and a significant increase in rainfall during the dry season. They rendered much better explanations as to what climate change is and the potential observed impacts on their activity was well documented by a majority of farmers. Despite some controversies between farmers' perceptions and meteorological data, it is however important to consider both knowledge systems as complementary rather than contradictory in order to help shape adaptation effectiveness and increase resilience. Thus, (1) Perceptions and knowledge of both farmers should be mainstreamed into local adaptation policy planning towards ensuring food security and addressing implementation barriers (2) The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural development (MINADER), in collaboration with meteorological services, should establish community-based early warning systems with the goal of translating scientific data into local 'farmer-friendly' indicators to help farmers reconcile their observations with data. (3) Foster the localisation of adaptation strategies by considering different farmer socio-demographic characteristics and gender-sensitive capacity building to ensure the entire farming workforce can adapt effectively to fluctuating rainfall and temperatures.
Keywords: Climate change/variability, Farmers, knowledge, Perception, Rural cameroon
Received: 01 Dec 2025; Accepted: 30 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Godwill Bate, Nangia and Bate. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Bate Godwill Bate
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