Vol.:(0123456789) Discover Sustainability (2022) 3:41 | https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-022-00106-6 1 3 Discover Sustainability Research Climate change vulnerability and smallholder farmers’ adaptive responses in the semi‑arid Far North Region of Cameroon Hamza Moluh Njoya 1,2,3  · Custodio Efraim Matavel 1,2,4  · Haji Athumani Msangi 1,5  · Hervé Alain Napi Wouapi 3  · Katharina Löhr 1,6  · Stefan Sieber 1,2 Received: 7 September 2022 / Accepted: 24 October 2022 © The Author(s) 2022 OPEN Abstract Climate change and variability contribute to exacerbating poverty and social unrest in poor countries. Therefore, it becomes important to assess vulnerability and adaptation measures to raise awareness and monitoring of climate change adaptation policy for better decision-making. This research examines how farmers perceive their vulnerability and how they respond to climate change in the semi-arid Far North Region of Cameroon. Using both quantitative and qualitative approaches, data on perceptions with regards to vulnerability and adaptation responses to climate change related haz- ards were collected based on expert opinions, individual farmers’ interviews, and focus group discussion. The qualitative data were triangulated with direct observations in the feld. The results reveal that farmers are mostly concerned about drought and decrease in rainfall. Thus, they have mainly implemented behavioral and locally-made options such as short-cycle varieties, terrace farming, half-moon, and bunds, among others, to overcome water shortages. Nevertheless, these measures were not solely driven by vulnerability; the socioeconomic context might play a role. Moreover, farmers perceive a limited capacity to adapt to climate change, which suggests that the government and policy-makers should focus, not only on implementing planned adaptation strategies, but also on the improvement and promotion of farmers’ autonomous adaptation strategies. Keywords Water shortage · Livelihoods · Agriculture · Resilience · Social vulnerability · Adaptation · Climate change 1 Introduction Worldwide, extreme weather and climate events have been occurring with more intensity and frequency as a result of climate change [1]. Moreover, evidence suggests a decrease in precipitation and expansion of drylands in the global semi- arid regions [2]. This has disproportionately afected the world’s poorest population [3, 4], especially in Africa where the population expansion is expected to place more people in exceptionally vulnerable locations [5]. Therefore, vulnerability and adaptation assessments become important tools to raise awareness and monitoring climate change adaptation policy for a better decision-making [6, 7]. Nevertheless, while adaptation to climate change is an imperative to reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience [8], the evidence of vulnerability reduction due to adaptation is rather scant [6]. * Hamza Moluh Njoya, Hamza.Moluh-Njoya@zalf.de | 1 Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Sustainable Land Use in Developing Countries, 15374 Müncheberg, Germany. 2 Department of Agricultural Economics, Faculty of Life Sciences, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany. 3 Department of Rural Socio-Economics and Agricultural Extension (SERVA), Faculty of Agronomy and Agricultural Sciences, University of Dschang, 222, Dschang, Cameroon. 4 Faculty of Agrarian Sciences, Universidade Lúrio, Unango Campus, Sanga, Niassa, Mozambique. 5 Department of Agricultural economics and Agribusiness, Sokoine University of Agriculture, 67125 Morogoro, Tanzania. 6 Urban Plant Ecophysiology, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany.