11. Emily Broad Leib, Harvard Law School

Food Lab Talk

Emily Broad Leib is the Founding Director at the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic where she and her students are working to simplify and sometimes modify legislation to help changemakers combat food waste. She and her team developed the Global Food Donation Policy Atlas, a tool with country-specific findings and recommendations that can help accelerate progress to overcome legal barriers to food donation and recovery. More recently, the team has been involved in developing a federal food waste policy in the U.S. On this episode of “Food Lab Talk,” Michiel speaks with Emily about how her work is enabling many of the changemakers we’ve heard from this season; staying motivated when the pace of change can feel slow; and what you can learn from lawyers about moving around roadblocks and accelerating progress in your work.

Emily Broad Leib: “I recognize lawyers have a really specific skillset, but I'm constantly conscious of the fact that our skillset only is a useful tool in combination with some of these other skillsets. So whether it's, working with people in the sciences or in public health that are collecting data on what solutions work and then we're unlocking the ability for those to go forward. Or whether it's working with the entrepreneurs who have the really good idea and we're putting the wind in their sails to say, if you change what you're doing slightly, you can comply with the laws. I think law is very much a tool that pairs really well in combination with others.”

01:03 Intro on Emily

04:11 The intersection of law and food waste reduction

05:44 An “illegal” grocery store sparks policy changes

07:02 “To a hammer, everything looks like a nail” – how to use other tools

08:40 The skills lawyers employee to move around roadblocks

10:54 Staying motivated with a long time horizon

14:09 How a lack of clarity can block change

14:35 How a lack of incentives can block change

15:00 Global areas of opportunity for changes in policy

17:15 The Global Food Donation Policy Atlas

18:50 Global system commonalities and collaborative wins

20:15 The actions moving the system to better support technical solutions

23:05 Scaling known solutions versus exploring the unknowns

25:38 Navigating partnerships to support progress in the broader ecosystem

29:00 How to demonstrate progress when the pace of change is slow

31:35 Emily’s theory of change

Links

• Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic
• The Global Food Donation Policy Atlas
• Federal Food Waste Policy
• The Zero Food Waste Coalition
• Food Law Leaders Call for Systems Change through 2023 Farm Bill

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*The views expressed by the guests in this podcast don't necessarily represent the host’s views, nor those of his employer.