Size matters : The Equal Earth Map
On Friday, the United Nations General Assembly adopted an African proposal for a new world map, which shows countries’ true size relative to one another.
In favor: 164 Against: 1 Abstentions: 6
This is the culmination of an African-led campaign against the 16th-century Mercator projection, still the most widely used map in the world.
The United States cast the sole vote against, dismissing the initiative as part of a “radical ideological project.” 146 to 1 is a Radical Ideological Project? Crazy Rogue Regime, comments Ben Norton. But of course, relative and to the eye, the Global South grew and Africa grew visibly, but the US shrunk and not even Trump with his sharpie changing maps and saying Google and Apple has ratified his decisions for earth, could change this.
Six countries – Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine – abstained. (Was it too difficult for them to grasp the concept?)
The resolution does not ban the Mercator projection or impose a replacement. Instead, it encourages governments, schools, international organizations and technology companies to use the Equal Earth projection and other so-called equal-area maps when relative size matters, and to teach the limitations of any flat map in representing a spherical planet.
Gerardus Mercator, a Flemish cartographer, devised his projection in 1569 to solve a practical problem of maritime navigation. Because straight lines on his map correspond to constant compass directions, sailors could use it to plot their courses. But preserving direction came at the expense of area. Landmasses appear increasingly enlarged the farther they are from the Equator.
Greenland, for instance, can look roughly comparable in size to Africa, even though Africa is about 14 times larger. Northern Europe and North America are similarly magnified, relative to equatorial regions.
Despite its original navigational purpose, Mercator remains common in educational, media, digital and official materials. The resolution says those distortions have contributed to the “symbolic minimization” of Africa and perpetuated an unbalanced view of the world.
The United States saw something far more political in the effort. “This resolution mocks the work and purpose of this institution,” the American representative said, arguing that what was presented as an innocuous attempt to update cartographic proportions was part of “the much larger and more radical ideological project it belongs to.”
The representative singled out the resolution’s references to reparations and “cognitive justice,” calling initiatives like it “barnacles on our work here and the reason this institution is losing its credibility.”
France moved in the opposite direction. Hours before the vote, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced Paris was planning to abandon Mercator for its maps of the world, aligning his Government with the broader effort championed by the African Union. The shift means France itself, like the United States and Russia, will appear smaller relative to equatorial countries.
It illustrates the unusual dynamics of this decades-long debate. Equal-area maps do not make Africa larger; they remove the exaggeration Mercator gives landmasses closer to the poles. The resolution itself acknowledges a fundamental problem that no vote can solve. No projection can perfectly reproduce the curved surface of the Earth on a plane. Each sacrifice something – area, shape, distance or direction – and each is suited to different purposes. The measure is nonbinding, and Mercator is not disappearing into the library vaults, never to be seen again.
But Friday’s vote gave near unanimous international backing to an argument which many African governments have increasingly pressed: that the choices we make over maps can shape how generations understand the world.
Here you can toggle the two maps for your own visual effect.
https://map-projections.net/compare.php?p1=equalearth&p2=mercator-84