The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) jointly organized with the League of the Arab States the 5th EGM of the Regional Initiative for the Assessment of the Impact of Climate Change on Water Resources and Socio-Economic Vulnerability in the Arab Region (RICCAR) during the period from 11 to 12 December 2013 in Amman-Jordan. The meeting aimed to: (1) Review the progress achieved on the Regional Initiative;
(2) Present the regional climate modeling results for the Arab Domain, including the contributions of various research institutions to the ensemble of climate modeling projections covering the region;
(3) Review the hydrological modeling results both at the regional and basin wide level to assess preliminary impacts of climate change on water resources;
(4) Present the TOR and criteria for the establishment of the regional knowledge-hub;
(5) Present the Vulnerability Assessment methodology agreed upon and select indicators used in this methodology;
(6) Discuss the procedure and future work needed to establish the RCOF for the Arab region.

This fifth expert group meetings was funded by SIDA under its project support for RICCAR, and chiefly coordinated with the SIDA project partners, namely the LAS, ACSAD, ESCWA, SMHI, UNISDR and the WMO.