Environmental Impact of Rural Periodic Market and its Assessment in Chapai-Nawabganj, Bangladesh

The Periodic rural market is known as hat and the regular market as bazar in Bangladesh. The rural markets (both periodic and regular) are an important medium of the marketing system in both the underdevelopment and developing countries of the world. The present study deals with the environmental impact of rural periodic markets and assesses periodic rural markets in Chapai-Nawabganj district of Bangladesh. The study area has a total of 40 RPMs and 6 RPMs, and growth centers have 16 RPMs under revenue collection, and 18 are non-government RPMs. It is seen that 07 haats are connected by waterways and 18 haats are connected by pucca roads. Most of the haats are situated in flood-free areas, but some haats are affected by floods. The introduction of rural periodic markets has brought a number of positive and negative impacts on the environment. In this study, these impacts have been identified both qualitatively and quantitatively for assessment of the magnitude of the impacts; these impacts have been converted into quantitative form.