So far, ways to limit global warming - from using energy-efficient light bulbs to installing solar panels - have attracted most attention in the climate change debate. But the next step will be climate change adaptation because the actions taken by governments - both here and overseas - to limit CO2 emissions have so far not been enough. They fall well short of what's required to meet a 2010 international commitment to limit global warming to 2 degrees. And the greater the risk of overshooting this target, the more our focus will have to shift to ways of coping with a warmer world. One of the consequences of global warming is rising sea levels and severe storm surges. In 2010, the federal Department of Climate Change released maps projecting sea level rises for major urban areas in Australia. It showed that, with a rise of 1.1 metres by 2100, combined with a high tide, Point Lonsdale would be almost cut off from the rest of Victoria. When Rowe applied in 2010 to build two houses on his block, he was required by Geelong Council to commission a study called a coastal hazard vulnerability assessment. It concluded that the vulnerability of the site to coastal flooding would be insignificant until 2030, low to 2070 and moderate after that. Rowe says he has been pulling down 30 to 40-year-old houses in the area - an indication of the general lifespan of the local housing stock - meaning it was likely any dwelling he built would likely be replaced before 2070. Nevertheless, he offered to raise the floor level of his houses by 40 centimetres to 2.34 metres, which is above the maximum estimated rise in water levels by 2100. This meant their frontyards could still be covered by up to 60 centimetres of water, but only in the worst of worst-case scenarios. Or, in the words of Rowe's solicitor, David King, during ''a one-in-a-hundred-year flood event, the highest tide you can ever get and coinciding with a storm surge''.

The Climate Change department says what are now one-in-100-year flood events are likely to occur more often by the end of the century. But even then, the yards of Rowe's houses would be under water for only about six hours and the peak of the flooding would be much shorter. Geelong Council referred the hazard assessment obtained by Rowe for peer review to a coastal engineer, who endorsed its basic findings, including data on water levels. The council then asked for further advice from the Corangamite Catchment Management Authority, which said that it was ''not suitably resourced to provide comment on the coastal hazard vulnerability report or peer review''. This did not, however, stop it recommending the application be refused - advice the council accepted. It's the absurdity of the whole thing. The access [to the houses] was only ever going to flood ankle deep for an hour or two where we were going to have a king tide. And we are talking 100 years down the track. Rowe appealed to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. After a nine-month delay, it finally approved the application, saying that by the end of the century measures were likely to have been taken to significantly reduce the impact of flooding.

Rowe had started the project armed with offers to buy the two houses off the plan, meaning all his costs would have been covered upfront. But, as the approval process dragged on, both buyers pulled out, leaving him carrying a hefty mortgage and legal costs. With the project finally completed last year, he has sold one of the houses, enabling him to offset the profit against some of the $700,000 he says he has forfeited. But he still has the second house on his hands, together with a big interest bill and says he is still at risk of going broke. Rowe says he is considering claiming compensation but admits the legal hurdles are high. ''It's the absurdity of the whole thing. The access [to the houses] was only ever going to flood ankle deep for an hour or two where we were going to have a king tide. And we are talking 100 years down the track.'' His experience is no isolated event. Andrew Macintosh of the Australian National University's Centre for Climate Law and Policy compiled a list of 18 cases in Victoria to illustrate what he describes as inconsistent and ''chaotic'' decision-making. They occurred in shires ranging from South Gippsland to Mornington to the Surf Coast. And all over the country, dogmatic state planning policies and local councils, fearful of their legal liabilities, have given efforts to deal with climate change a bad name. Preparing for the consequences of global warming, one of which is rising sea levels, makes sense. This rise has been occurring at an average rate of 3.1 millimetres a year over the past two decades, approaching twice the rate over the entire last century.

The Climate Change Department has estimated that with a sea level rise of 1.1 metres, between 157,000 and 247,600 existing residential properties, mainly along the eastern seaboard, are at risk of flooding. But there is also a risk at the other end of the spectrum of an over-zealous implementation of laws and regulations to deal with the consequences of global warming, which are highly uncertain and mostly a long way off. Projections from the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 show sea level rises of between 0.19 metres and 0.82 metres by 2100 - in other words, a very wide range. These projections cover different scenarios for economic growth and reliance on fossil fuels and also reflect the multiple influences on sea levels, such as the expansion of the oceans due to warmer temperatures, the melting of ice sheets, regional temperature variations and changing wave activity and sand movement. When it released its sea level rise maps, the Climate Change Department extended the intergovernmental panel's upper limit to 1.1 metres, based on a ''high-end'' scenario developed by the CSIRO that included additional information on melting ice sheets. But it hedged its findings with a string of qualifications, leading it to the conclusion that ''the maps should not be relied on for decision-making''.

Yet that is effectively what state governments and local councils are doing. Most state governments have adopted similarly high benchmarks for sea level rises by 2100 for planning purposes. In Victoria, the benchmark was originally set at 0.8 metres. In terms of the intergovernmental panel's calculations, it is a worst-case scenario, based on assumptions that the world continues to follow a fossil fuel-intensive development path. It would see temperatures rise by between 2.4 and 6.4 degrees and concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reach 1500 parts per million. That compares to 400ppm now and the target of 450ppm agreed to by countries under the 2010 Cancun Agreement. Intuitively, it seems to make sense to plan for the worst outcomes. But it is not setting benchmarks that is the problem - indeed on present climate change trends they may need to be raised. It is the inflexible way in which they are applied, given the uncertainty about future sea level rises. Macintosh sees the Point Lonsdale and other cases as examples of ''gross over-adaptation''.

''We have no control over what [the] sea level rise is going to be. If I was going to have a guess, I would probably put it at between 20 and 60 centimetres by the end of the century. It could be 20 to 180 centimetres. But to push it way up there we have to basically give up on mitigation and I'm not willing to do that. However, if you are focusing on a particular figure like 80 centimetres, you are going to get it wrong. There are a lot of highly risk-averse decisions being made based on a pretty poor understanding of the nature of the uncertainty we are facing.'' Victoria is not the only state where councils have courted controversy. Port Macquarie-Hastings Council on the north coast of NSW has declared 92 properties at Lake Cathie at risk, based on the results of a coastal hazards study. This caused an uproar from residents that led to a council decision to build a sea wall, despite a report to council from consultants recommending against it. Macintosh favours shifting responsibility for development of vulnerable properties onto land owners but with restrictions on what they can do to protect their properties by means such as sea walls. ''If you want to develop a site that is fine, but you are not going to be allowed to defend your property because that is diverting the problem to someone else's property,'' he says. A further condition could be to make homes transportable in areas that could be inundated during an owner's lifetime but with a requirement to move them only if dangerous sea level rises materialise. ''In this day and age you can easily construct dwellings that are moveable,'' he says. Steps in this direction have already been taken. The Victorian government amended planning laws in 2011 to allow residential development provided dwellings could be moved in the event of sea level rises.

The Productivity Commission says approval for building could be made conditional on developers indemnifying councils against future legal action stemming from the effects of climate change. Last year saw a widespread backlash against state government approaches to sea level rise. In Victoria, the Baillieu government softened Labor's policy by restricting the benchmark of an 0.8 metres rise by 2100 to greenfield developments, while urban infill developments would have to cater only for an 0.2 metres rise by 2040. The Newman government in Queensland dropped its 0.8 metres benchmark completely. The NSW government, responding to what it said were concerns raised by communities and councils, said it would remove the benchmarks of 0.4 metres for 2050 and 0.9 metres for 2100. It promised instead to help councils adopt projections relevant to their areas and to remove the requirement to declare properties at risk as a result of coastal hazards studies. Many council policies are now in limbo, the councils lacking the expertise to formulate their own alternatives. According to Macintosh, the NSW government ''seems to be sending a message to a whole lot of people to not do anything''. There is an echo of that in the federal government's approach. While it has acted to rein in emissions through a carbon tax and emissions trading, its efforts on adaptation have lacked focus. In June it stopped funding the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, a decision Melbourne University Associate Professor Peter Christoff describes as ''very short sighted at a time when the science is indicating that adaptation is a much more immediate priority than we initially thought''.

Mike Steketee is a freelance journalist.