The United Nations General Assembly has backed a resolution encouraging maps that show continents in their correct relative proportions. The vote renews scrutiny of the centuries-old Mercator projection and its misleading portrayal of Africa’s size.
The “Correct the Map” resolution passed on September 4 with 164 countries supporting it, including France and the United Kingdom. The United States cast the only opposing vote, while six countries abstained.
Togo sponsored the initiative with African Union support. It promotes equal-area alternatives, including the Equal Earth projection, which cartographers developed in 2018.
What the UN vote means
The African-led campaign urges governments, schools and technology companies to reconsider maps that make Africa appear disproportionately small.
The UN’s Office of the Special Adviser on Africa described the vote as the culmination of efforts against misleading cartographic representations. Its account confirmed the overwhelming support for maps that better reflect continental sizes.
The initiative concerns how people represent the planet on a flat surface. It does not change the physical size of countries or continents.
Its central argument is particularly clear when comparing Africa with Greenland. On a standard Mercator world map, the two can appear similar in size. In reality, Africa covers roughly 14 times Greenland’s area.
Why Mercator distorts the world
Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator introduced his projection in 1569 to help sailors navigate.
The method preserves local angles and represents routes of constant compass bearing as straight lines. These properties made it useful for plotting a ship’s course. However, a straight route on the map does not necessarily represent the shortest journey.
Mercator belongs to the cylindrical family of projections. Its rectangular grid offers a mathematical way to represent the curved Earth on a flat surface.
The problem arises when readers use it to compare land areas. Scale increases towards the poles, making northern regions appear much larger relative to equatorial areas.
Africa therefore looks smaller in comparison with heavily enlarged Greenland, Europe and northern North America. The effect reflects the projection’s mathematical design, rather than any change in geography.
How Equal Earth changes the picture
Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny developed Equal Earth in 2018. Their projection preserves the relative areas of countries and continents while offering a familiar-looking world map.
Its appearance resembles the Robinson projection, but Equal Earth maintains proportional areas. That makes it useful for world maps showing geographic distributions and information requiring accurate area comparisons.
Esri’s technical documentation notes that NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies quickly adopted the projection.
Equal Earth still involves compromises. It distorts shapes, directions, angles and distances, even while preserving area.
No flat world map can preserve every property of the curved Earth simultaneously. The practical choice depends on the task: navigating a route requires different priorities from comparing continents in a classroom.
