Short though it is, How Nature Matters is the most detailed and carefully argued work among recent, and welcome, attempts to give the notion of nature's meanings a prominent place in environmental philosophy. Its author's aim is to 'buck the trend' of myopically focusing on nature's values by switching the focus to meanings (p. 49). This does not entail ignoring environmental values since, James argues, the fact that a mountain or forest has meaning for people is a powerful reason, other things being equal, for it to have value for them. References to nature's meanings are especially sparse in the literature of the currently dominant 'cultural ecosystem services' model of nature's value to us. Writing in 2013, the then Prince of Wales may have been right to applaud a shift away from viewing nature as a resource for economic growth to seeing it is as 'a provider of... vital services' (p. 20). But James demonstrates that the services model shares the same basic structure, and limitations, as a crudely economic one: it remains 'instrumental', and construes the relation between the 'provider' and the benefit it brings as a means-end, cause-and-effect one. For example, the so-called 'existence value' that a natural entity - the blue whale, say - may have because knowledge of its existence produces pleasure or satisfaction is a thoroughly instrumental one.
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