The United Nations General Assembly has voted to back a resolution spearheaded by several African countries to adopt a map that shows the continent as much bigger than it is on conventional world maps. On Friday, the resolution aimed at “a more accurate representation” of continental landmasses on the globe was supported by 164 countries, while the United States voted against it and six other states abstained. The new map – known as the Equal Earth cartographic projection – “is a relevant option for improving the accuracy of the cartographic representation of the world”, the resolution stated.
Foreign Minister Robert Dussey of Togo, which drove the resolution, said maps “guide education, nourish the imagination, and influence collective perceptions”. But how does the new map differ from the traditional version, and why did the US object? The UN has urged member states to adopt a new map in place of the centuries-old, traditional Mercator projection, which was designed for maritime navigation by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569.
That projection focused on accurate depictions of the shapes and angles of land masses, but their relative sizes were often inaccurate – in part because of the challenge of rendering a three-dimensional globe onto a two-dimensional surface. It inflated northern regions and compressed equatorial ones, making Europe and North America appear much larger, while shrinking Africa and South America. It does not look like it on the conventional Mercator map, but Africa is a giant among the world’s continents at about 30.3 million square kilometres (11.7 million square miles).
It is large enough to contain the US, China, India and most of Europe, yet on a Mercator map it looks roughly the same size as Greenland, which is actually about 14 times smaller than the continent. Latin America covers roughly 20 million sq km (7.7 million sq miles), of which South America accounts for 17.8 million sq km (6.9 million sq miles). Oceania spans about 8.5 million sq km (3.3 million sq miles), almost all of it Australia.
South Asia is the smallest of the four at about 5.1 million sq km (2 million sq miles), though it is home to about a quarter of the world’s population. Combined, the four cover about 64 million sq km (24.7 million sq miles), more than 40 percent of the world’s land surface. Europe, by comparison, is 10.2 million sq km (3.9 million sq miles).
France, which co-sponsored the resolution in support of the new map, announced on Friday that it would abandon the Mercator projection. In that map, “the United States, Russia and China take on a disproportionate visual prominence compared to Africa, Latin America or Southeast Asia”, while “Greenland appears almost as big as Africa,” Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said. US representative Yaryna Ferencevych said before the vote that the resolution is “the reason this institution is losing its credibility”.
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