ial Conference, with branches of a General Council, Trade Review Body, and Dispute Settlement Body. Below these branches lie several councils and committees to deal with many different trade issues. One branch consists of a committee with the name Trade and the Environment, which concerns itself with issues relating to trade and the environment. Overseeing the organization of the WTO is the director-general, currently Michael Moore. The basis for all WTO decisions lies in its multilateral trading system, where a large amount of agreements that are negotiated and signed by members must finally be ratified in each country’s individual Senate. While the individual agreements are signed and ratified by each country’s government, the primary purpose of the legislation is to assist the country’s producers, exporters, and importers. The overall goal of the WTO is to make trade freer, resulting in, claims the WTO, a promotion of peace worldwide, an increase in income and a stimulation of economic growth. As part of its preamble, the WTO claims an interest in the environment, and thus created the Committee on Trade and the Environment to make decisions when environmental issues are involved. The preamble itself states it will promote trade "while allowing for the optimal use of the world’s resources in accordance with the objective of sustainable development, seeking both to protect and preserve the environment." The organization, in the past few years, however, has encouraged a lower tariff universally, thereby encouraging producers to look towards less developed countries as prime places for cheap labor and low regulations, especially low regulations relating to the environment. These less developed countries, or LDCs, are known universally for having very cheap, productive labor, and are not even close to having the environmental protection efforts seen in the United States and Europe. So these countries...
