Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ecological Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon Understanding environmental conficts through cultural ecosystem services - the case of agroecosystems in Bulgaria Ksenija Hanaček a, ⁎ , Johannes Langemeyer a,b , Tatyana Bileva c , Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos a,d a Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Edifci Z (ICTA-ICP), Carrer de les Columnes s/n, Campus de la UAB, 08193 Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain b Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), Carrer Doctor Aiguader 88, 08003 Barcelona, Spain c Agricultural University of Plovdiv, Department of Agroecology and Environmental Protection, 4000, 12, Mendeleev Street, Plovdiv, Bulgaria d Energy and Resources Group, University of California at Berkeley, California 94720, United States ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Cultural ecosystem services Social-ecological systems Small-scale agriculture Environmental confict Network analysis ABSTRACT Cultural ecosystem services (CES) that people co-create with agroecosystems, such as place attachment and traditional knowledge, are declining in rural areas undergoing abrupt economic, environmental, and social changes. As a result, environmental conficts arise. This article uses an ecosystem services framework to trace causes, outcomes, and responses to open and latent environmental conficts in rural Bulgaria. Based on a cor- relation network analysis, the obtained results reveal the perceived importance of rural place identity and connectedness to nature as central and the most infuenced CES in latent environmental conficts responses (without visible mobilizations). As such, CES can be overlooked as important to local people in rural areas when environmental decisions are made. The study connects these fndings with the notion of latency conficts and argues how environmental conficts over the agricultural land enclosure and rural marginalization are inter- twined with non-material contributions – CES, unveiled through the network analysis. 1. Introduction Cultural ecosystem services (CES) – or the non-material contribu- tions, such as rural identity and connectedness to nature, that people co-create with and derive from agroecosystems (Chan et al., 2012b; Hartel et al., 2014) – are declining due to vast economic, social, and environmental changes in rural areas (Fischer and Eastwood, 2016; Plieninger et al., 2015; Ryfeld et al., 2019). Such changes infuence and dispose traditional practices and the ways through which communities manage and relate to agricultural land (Chapman et al., 2019; Zheng et al., 2015). The decline of CES afects social groups diferently, with some better of than others, thereby creating the base for environmental confict in latent (without visible mobilizations) or open forms (with visible mobilizations) (Beltrán, 2015; Hanaček and Rodríguez-Labajos, 2018). For this study, environmental conficts are understood as occuring in and involving multiple stages of natural resources use and manage- ment (Cazals et al., 2015). These conficts often involve multiple factors that are closely interrelated (Kull et al., 2015), such as power asym- metries between diferent actors, divergent values people attach to nature, or unevenly distributed access to environmental benefts (O'Connor and Martinez-Alier, 1998). For instance, benefts are fre- quently shifted through privatization processes, power relations, and control over natural resources (Wieland et al., 2016). When there is unequal access to natural resources among diferent social groups and uneven distribution of the benefts ecosystems provide or insufcient recognition of the diferent values related to these benefts, environ- mental conficts are likely to ensue (Langemeyer and Connolly, 2020; Martinez-Alier, 2014; O'Connor and Martinez-Alier, 1998; Ribot and Peluso, 2003). However, conficts do not always materialize in the form of direct mobilization. If conficts are not visible, it does not necessary mean that they are not present (Temper et al., 2018). Thus, not all conficts are open or visible struggles or have outcomes that are fair equal for all people (Beltrán, 2015). It is important to recognize a broader defnition of confict and diferent expressions of struggle, which better capture the unfair or tense character of certain social relations and the asso- ciated processes of resistance (Le Billon, 2015). When conficts are “invisible” or latent (Ariza-Montobbio and Lele, 2010; Beltrán, 2015), then they are not (yet) openly manifested con- cerns and issues about natural resources and its benefts (Ariza- Montobbio and Lele, 2010; O'Connor and Martinez-Alier, 1998). For https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106834 Received 6 December 2019; Received in revised form 26 August 2020; Accepted 31 August 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: ksenija.hanacek@gmail.com (K. Hanaček). Ecological Economics 179 (2021) 106834 0921-8009/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T