João Pato (Lisbon, 1974) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon (ICS-UL) and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. Graduated in Sociology from ISCTE (2001) and PhD from the University of Lisbon (ICS-UL, 2008) with a thesis in Social Sciences on public water policies in Portugal in a historical perspective (1884 – 2007). He also attended the Business Administration and Organization (ISCTE) degree for three academic years, a postgraduate degree in Social Sciences at ICS-UL (2002) and received the Gulbenkian Prize for Research Stimulus (2002).

He has been a member of the MAB / UNESCO Portugal Committee since 2005, and in 2006 he was a member of the UNESCO working group that produced the document “United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development: contributions to its dynamization in Portugal”. It also contributed to the establishment of the Portuguese Water Partnership (2009), an initiative of the Ministry of Environment, Spatial Planning and Environment.

His work seeks interdisciplinary and longitudinal (in a historical perspective) approaches to public policy problems, with special attention to the articulation between the enunciation of values ​​and elaboration of political purposes and the various ways in which they are sought to materialize at a certain historical moment and political context (institutions, forms of regulation, scientific knowledge and public participation). Its postdoctoral project seeks to develop an approach of this nature from an international comparison perspective, focusing on the design and implementation of public policies for climate change in an urban context, comparing Lisbon and Amsterdam.