Annual report of the ICP M&M - 2022 | Umweltbundesamt

The International Cooperative Programme on Modelling and Mapping of Critical Levels and Loads and Air
Pollution Effects, Risks and Trends (ICP Modelling & Mapping, ICP M&M) is a programme under the
Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP).
Interest in the critical loads (CL) and levels approach for pollution control has gathered momentum over the
past decades. To provide strategies for emission reductions as inputs to the negotiations of protocols to the
Convention, the ICP M&M was established in 1988.
The programme is planned and coordinated by a Task Force (TF) under the leadership of France, located at
the French National Institute for Industrial Environment and Risks (Institut National de l’Environnement
Industriel et des Risques, Ineris), in collaboration with the Coordination Centre for Effects (CCE) hosted at the
German Environment Agency (UBA, Germany) and with the Centre for Dynamic Modelling hosted at IVL
Swedish Environmental Research Institute (IVL, Göteborg).
The mandate of the ICP M&M is to provide the Working Group on Effects (WGE) and the Executive Body (EB)
and other subsidiary bodies with comprehensive information on (i) critical levels and loads and their
exceedances for selected pollutants, (ii) the development and application of other methods for effects-based
approaches, and (iii) modelling and mapping of the present status and trends in impacts of air pollution. To
this aim, the CCE together with the Programme TF determine receptor-specific critical loads for (indirect)
effects of the (long-term) deposition of various air pollutants and critical levels for direct effects of gaseous air
pollutants; map pollutant depositions and concentrations which exceed critical thresholds and establish
appropriate methods as a basis for assessing potential damage, e.g. via dynamic modelling. Moreover, various
European databases on soil, land, climatic and other variables are used to calculate critical loads for those
countries that do not provide national data. The maps are used for integrated assessment modelling by the
Task Force on Integrated Assessment Modelling (TFIAM). Since its creation in January 2020 the CDM is the
second designated centre to the ICP M&M, hosted by IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute. Its main
tasks mandated by the EB are the development and promotion of methods for dynamic modelling (including
consideration of effects on biodiversity, interactions with climate change and land use, to complement CLs
with additional measures of the effects such as, e.g., target loads) and the development and maintenance of
the common Working Group on Effects (WGE) website (https://www.unece-wge.org/).