The United Nations General Assembly voted on Friday to adopt a new global map that reflects the true relative sizes of countries, after African countries urged the United Nations to correct a centuries-old error.
The “Correct the Map” resolution, put forward by the member states of the African Union along with the Bahamas, was adopted with overwhelming support; 164 member states voted in favor of it, 6 abstained from voting, while the United States was the only country that voted against it.
The resolution aims to provide a “fair” representation of the world’s regions, especially Africa, noting that the distortions in the current global map have led to a “symbolic dwarfing” of the continent in people’s collective imagination.
Today, many world maps are based on the Mercator Projection, created by the European cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. This projection is widely used in navigation because its north-south direction lines maintain constant and accurate directions relative to the equator.
But the Mercator projection is less useful when used as a world map, because its area scale is distorted; Countries located further from the equator appear disproportionately larger compared to countries closer to it. For example, Greenland in the Mercator projection appears larger than the continent of South America, and it also appears close to Africa in size.
In reality, the area of Greenland is approximately the size of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, while the area of Africa is about 14 times the area of Greenland.
Some critics of the Mercator projection believe that its continued widespread use may be because it shows Europe in a central location and with a larger size, along with other Western regions such as North America, which may contribute to establishing perceptions of European superiority.
The UN resolution notes “with concern that this distortion contributes to reducing the perceived sizes of Africa, Latin America and South Asia, and perpetuates an unbalanced vision of the world.”
The resolution adds that these distortions “also contribute to underestimating the social and economic realities, infrastructure needs, and potential for development and prosperity in the regions of the South, and can also fuel prejudices in the environmental, geopolitical, and security fields.”
France supports the campaign to correct the distortions
Accordingly, the resolution proposes, as an “act of epistemic justice and commemorative reparation,” to replace the Mercator projection with an “Equal Earth” projection, which depicts the relative areas of world regions with a greater degree of accuracy.
In the "Equal Earth" map, presented at the North American Cartographic Information Society conference in 2018, Europe appears smaller, Brazil appears much larger, and Greenland noticeably shrinks. Africa also looks much larger in comparison.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot announced on Friday that France would "abandon the Mercator projection" in favor of representations that show the actual areas of countries more accurately, according to the state-run France 24 television network.
“The United States, Russia and China have a disproportionate visual prominence compared to Africa, Latin America or Southeast Asia,” Barrow said, adding that “distortions eventually take hold in perceptions” and that “it is time to correct them.”
The UN vote comes after the African Union adopted the “equal terrain” map in March, and after Togo, on behalf of the African Union, asked UN member states in April to do the same. Subsequently, a draft resolution was prepared, and the United Nations General Assembly held informal consultations on it in July.
Ama Tum-Amoah, Commissioner for the Department of Health, Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development of the African Union, said in a statement in March:
“Africa, which has long been dwarfed on maps, now insists on being seen in its true size — geographically, historically, morally, culturally, economically, diplomatically and globally.”
New Zealand has also previously objected to the Mercator map. A 2018 tourism ad featuring then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern joked that “New Zealand is disappearing from world maps,” due to its location in the lower right corner of traditional maps.
The Equal Earth map addresses this issue by being available in multiple forms, including a version that places Oceania at the center rather than London's Greenwich. Greenwich Mean Time has long been used as a standard for universal time and a global geographic reference.
Digital mapping platforms, such as Google Maps, also currently use a version of the Mercator projection. The draft resolution urges technological platforms to cooperate with member states of the United Nations and regional organizations, and to adopt the most accurate projection.
