Purpose What people understand by climate change can differ depending on whether and how the change affects their livelihoods. It is largely documented that farmers who depend on rainfall to cultivate crops understand climate change as a change in climatic elements, especially rainfall which negatively affects crop production. However, studies on how people whose livelihoods do not directly depend on climate change understand it, whether and how the changes affect their livelihoods and whether and how they are coping to the change are limited in the literature. This paper aims to therefore determine perspective of traders of climate change and how they cope. Design/methodology/approach The data collection took place in Accra, which is the capital city of Ghana. Thousand traders who sold unprocessed and processed food as well as manufactured goods took part in the study. Questionnaires which were largely open-ended were administered. SPSS version 16 was used to analyse the data. In addition, some of the interview responses were included verbatim to support study participants view on some issues. Findings The majority of the respondents engaged in trading of manufactured goods. The respondents understood climate change as prolonged dry season and changes in rainfall pattern. About 97 per cent of the respondents said climate change had negatively impacted their trading activities, and almost all respondents (91 per cent) who were affected by climate change livelihoods were also affected such that they were unable to meet their basic needs. About 23 per cent have adopted coping strategies by depending on friends, relatives and engaging in menial jobs, and 63 per cent adopted no coping strategy. Originality/value It seems that rural farmers may have more options than urban traders during climate change. This can mean that research and policy efforts towards adaption to climate change should not focus only on farmers but traders as well.