French diplomacy abandons Mercator projection for official maps

The size of France should now appear smaller on official French diplomatic maps. The Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs announced on Friday that it was abandoning the Mercator projection, inherited from the 16th century, in its diplomatic uses.

Designed for maritime navigation, it artificially enlarges the territories located at high latitudes. This is the one usually found in atlases and school textbooks.

France now assumes the Eckert IV projection, close to the Equal Earth projection, recommended by a text supported by Togo and the African Union - and co-sponsored by France - adopted Friday by the United Nations.

“Ensure we represent the world accurately”

Designed at the beginning of the 20th century by the German cartographer Max Eckert, this new cartography represents the equatorial regions - Africa, Latin America and South Asia - in proportions closer to reality, and especially shrinks the size of the United States, China and Europe.

“Our diplomacy must fight two battles: carry our own story and always ensure that we represent the world accurately,” explained Jean-Noël Barrot, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, on Friday at the opening of La Fabrique de la diplomatie, in Paris. These distortions end up settling into perceptions. The time has come for us to correct it. »

Maps “influence collective perceptions”

“A map is never completely neutral,” continued the minister, emphasizing that in the Mercator projection, “the one that each of us has known since childhood, Greenland seems almost as vast as Africa, while Africa is in reality about fourteen times larger.”

“Maps shape our understanding of the world,” said Togo’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Robert Dussey, at the UN. “They guide education, nourish the imagination and influence collective perceptions. When they give a distorted image of our planet, they risk perpetuating erroneous representations passed down from generation to generation. »

“Changing the map obviously does not change the world,” added Jean-Noël Barrot. But correcting a representation that distorts it is already creating truth. »