The New Economics Foundation (Nef), a UK think-tank that helped compile the report, had published a study that said Britain's "ecological debt day" in 2006 fell on 16 April.

The authors said this year's global ecological debt day meant that it would take the Earth 15 months to regenerate what was consumed this year.

"By living so far beyond our environmental means and running up ecological debts means we make two mistakes," said Andrew Simms, Nef's policy director.

"First, we deny millions globally who already lack access to sufficient land, food and clean water the chance to meet their needs. Secondly, we put the planet's life support mechanisms in peril," he added.

'Eco-footprints'

The findings are based on the concept of "ecological footprints", a system of measuring how much land and water a human population needs to produce the resources it consumes and absorb the resulting waste.

Global Footprint Network's executive director, Mathis Wackernagel, said humanity was living off its "ecological credit card" and was "liquidating the planet's natural resources".

"While this can be done for a short while, overshoot ultimately leads to the depletion of resources, such as forests, oceans and agricultural land, upon which our economy depends," Mr Wackernagel said.

Fredrik Erixon, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy (Ecipe), a Brussels-based think tank, said he applauded the authors on their innovative way of focusing attention to the issue of resource depletion.

But he added he found the concept of ecological debt to be "quite ludicrous".

"When it comes to using footprints as a way to follow the micro effects of various economic behaviours on the environment, it can be quite good," Mr Erixon said.

"But the way they are collecting and assessing information is wrong. We don't really get any serious information out of this."

He also questioned the use of the term "debt": "A debt is where you have over-savings in one area of the economy, and under-savings in another.

"Then you have a transfer of savings from one actor to another in the form of a loan. But who are we indebted to?" Mr Erixon asked.

"Perhaps 'ecological exuberance' is better than ecological debt."

He added that history had shown that technological advances had led to more efficient uses of natural resources, and had sustained economic growth.

Growing global populations, mainly concentrated along coastlines, and the resulting increase in untreated sewage are endangering human health and wildlife, as well as livelihoods from fisheries to tourism, according to the "State of the Marine Environment" report.

"An estimated 80 percent of marine pollution originates from the land," said Achim Steiner, United Nations undersecretary-general and UNEP's executive director.

"And this could rise significantly by 2050 if, as expected, coastal populations double in just over 40 years time and action to combat pollution is not accelerated," Steiner said in a statement.

The report is compiled from a wide variety of government, academic and other sources by UNEP's Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based Sources.

In many developing countries, between 80 percent and nearly 90 percent of sewage entering the coastal zones is estimated to be raw and untreated. These wastes contain bacteria and viruses that can contaminate marine species such as shellfish that are consumed by people, Nuttall said.

Studies in the Caribbean Sea have also shown that sewage encourages the spread of disease in corals, ultimately destroying them. Around 80 percent of Caribbean coral has been lost to disease in the past 20 years, report researchers at the University of North Carolina in the United States.

Some cities in the developed world also dump their sewage directly into waterways.

More than one half of wastewater entering the Mediterranean Sea is untreated, as is 60 percent of the wastewater discharged into the Caspian Sea, the UNEP report found.

Unlike the United States and countries in the European Union, Canada has no national standards for sewage treatment for cities. Montreal dumps billions of litres of untreated sewage into the St. Lawrence River, while the postcard-perfect tourist city of Victoria, British Columbia dumps all of its waste directly into the Pacific Ocean.

Such waste can contain high levels of toxic chemicals, heavy metals and excreted pharmaceuticals. The latter pose risks that are only beginning to be understood. Emerging research shows negative impacts on marine life from residues of birth control and antidepressant drugs like Prozac even at extremely low concentrations of less than one part per billion.

"The big unknown" is what effect these pharmaceutical residues might have on chronically exposed plants, animals and people, Christian Daughton, chief of the environmental chemistry branch at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has been reported as saying.

Expensive treatment plants are not the only solution to untreated sewages wastes -- coastal wetlands, salt marshes and mangroves can also do the job, Nuttall explained.

"It's important for governments to conserve and rehabilitate these natural features and take their value into consideration in their urban planning," he said.

Plastic is an even more visible environmental concern, killing more than a million seabirds and 100,000 mammals and sea turtles each year, according to previous U.N. reports.

Plastic bags, bottle tops and polystyrene foam coffee cups are often found in the stomachs of dead sea lions, dolphins, sea turtles and birds. Seagulls in the North Sea had an average of 30 pieces of plastic in their stomachs, according to a Dutch study in 2004.

The volume of plastic debris was estimated at eight million pieces a day in 1982 and is unquestionably much higher today, perhaps double or triple that number. About 20 percent of the plastic in the oceans comes from ships or offshore platforms; the rest is blown or washed off the land, according to the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy.

Plastic debris is now found everywhere, even the remotest regions of Antarctica.

Truly pristine locales no longer exist, writes David K.A. Barnes of the British Antarctic Survey in a recent paper.

"Some surveys have involved the first known visit by man to very 'remote' shores, but our miracle material had long since beaten us there," he wrote.

In parts of the Southern Ocean, marine debris has tripled in volume in the past decade. Barnes has also shown that marine debris is transporting exotic species to locales they could never have reached normally, changing the ecology of some regions.

Most plastics do not biodegrade, they just break up into ever-smaller particles. British scientists have discovered that microscopic pieces of plastic can be found everywhere in the oceans, even inside plankton, the foundation of the marine food chain.

"The problem of marine litter has steadily grown worse, despite national and international efforts to control it," acknowledges the UNEP report.

The report's findings will be officially presented to governments attending a review of the decade-old Global Programme of Action initiative taking place in Beijing, China, from Oct. 16-20.

There have been some improvements, the report notes. Levels of oily waste discharged from industry and cities has, since the mid 1980s, been cut by close to 90 percent. Marine contamination from toxic persistent organic pollutants like DDT and discharges of radioactive waste has also been sharply reduced.

However, larger challenges lie ahead, such as global warming and sea level rise.

"So we have a long way to go politically, technically and financially if we are to hand over healthy and productive seas and oceans to the next generation," Steiner said.

"The coastlines of Asia-Pacific nations are generally highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, particularly sea-level rise caused by rising global temperatures," said the CSIRO report released on Monday.

"Vast areas of the Asia-Pacific are low lying, particularly the small-island states, as well as the large river deltas found in India and Bangladesh, Southeast Asia and China."

Sea level rise between 30 to 50 cm (11 to 19 inches) would affect more than 100,000 km (62,140 miles) of coast, particularly China's Pearl Delta and Bangladesh's delta, said the report.

"As sea level rise exceeds half a meter, the area affected in the Asia-Pacific region rises to over half a million square kilometres, affecting hundreds of millions of people," it said.

"Large areas of Bangladesh, India, Vietnam are inundated and Kiribati, Fiji and the Maldives are reduced to just a small fraction of their current land area."

ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES

The report also said rising sea levels and increased rainfall would spread infectious diseases in the region, leaving millions more at risk of dengue fever and malaria.

It said local and regional economies would be hard hit by chronic food and water insecurity, warning Sri Lanka's
GDP could fall by 2.4 percent with less than a two degree Celsius warming.

The report also warned of environmental refugees fleeing their flooded homelands, citing growing migration from some South Pacific island states already suffering rising sea levels.

Some 17,000 islanders applied for New Zealand residence in the last two years, compared with 4,000 in 2003, it said.

The low-lying South Pacific island nation of Micronesia has experienced an annual sea level rise of 21.4 mm since 2001.

The report, commissioned by Australian aid agencies, prompted calls for Canberra to do more to combat climate change and to be more open to environmental refugees.

Australia has not signed the Kyoto Protocol to cut greenhouse gases, which cause global warming, and has rejected requests from Pacific islands to take environmental refugees.

World Vision Australia chief, Reverend Tim Costello, called on Australia to review immigration programs to consider people displaced by rising sea levels.

"This is enlightened self-interest, because there are going to be so many environmental refugees knocking on our door, flooding here with the sea levels rise as predicted and...the failure of economics and crops because of the rain changes in so many of these countries," Costello told local radio.

The Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported that Mount Tavurvur, on the outskirts of Rabaul, erupted Saturday with a violent blast, shattering windows as far as seven miles away.

ABC reported that boats evacuated about 200 people in Rabaul and nearby towns as the peak spewed ash, rock and billows of smoke high into the air.

Local hotel owner Bruce Alexander told ABC that if it were not for favorable winds, the damage could have exceeded that of the 1994 eruption that devastated Rabaul so extensively that the government was forced to construct a new capital, Kokopo, 12 miles away.

The bodies of cousins David F. Dryen, 70, and John W. Dryen, 59, were found Saturday in the Poquoson River where it empties into Chesapeake Bay, the Coast Guard said. Their boat was found capsized Friday night in seas of up to 5 feet and 50 mph wind gusts, Petty Officer Kip Wadlow said.

The National Weather Service said rainfall since Friday ranged from 4 to 9 inches as a storm stalled over the state and a band of rain drenched central Virginia to Hampton Roads. Rain was forecast to taper off later Saturday.

In Richmond's Battery Park, police went door-to-door to more than 40 homes and apartment buildings to enforce the city-ordered evacuation. A month ago, the area was flooded during Tropical Depression Ernesto, causing $9 million in property damage and the condemnation of 68 properties. More than 250 homes were evacuated then.

The latest evacuation involved approximately 100 residents, said Britt Drewes, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Works. An emergency shelter was opened.

"These residents are so sad to see this again," Drewes said. "When the rain started, everybody cringed. There's just frustration."

The flooding is partly the result of a broken sewer main that fouled the flood waters and brought vermin and snakes into some residents homes during Ernesto. Forty million gallons of water a day is being pumped from the neighborhood, but that doesn't keep up with the rain, Drewes said.

"At this point, the water is still very high," she reported before noon Saturday.

Repairs to the sewer pipe are complicated because it is under a former landfill about a mile from the urban neighborhood.