The United Nations General Assembly on Friday voted to adopt a new world map that reflects the true relative size of countries, after African countries called on the international body to correct a centuries-old historical error.
The resolution to “amend the map”, submitted by African Union member states along with the Bahamas, received widespread support. 164 countries voted in favor of it, and 6 abstained from voting, with only the United States against.
The resolution aims to ensure a “fair” representation of the world’s regions, particularly Africa, given that distortions in the current world map have contributed to a “symbolic devaluation” of the continent’s size in the collective consciousness of mankind.
Drop Mercato
Many world maps are now based on the Mercator projection, created by the European cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. This projection is widely used in navigation, because its lines of longitude extend at a fixed angle to the equator, which allows correct directions to be maintained.
However, the Mercator projection is less suitable for representing the world as a whole, due to the distortion of the size scale, since countries far from the equator are larger than their true size compared to countries closer to it.
For example, Greenland appears larger on Mercator’s map than the continent of South America, and it also appears close in size to Africa.
But in reality, the area of Greenland is about the size of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the area of Africa is about 14 times larger than Greenland.
Increase the size of Europe
Some critics of Mercator’s projection believe that it continued on a large scale because it exaggerated the size of Europe and placed it in the center of the map, along with other western regions such as North America, thus perpetuating the perception of European superiority.
The UN resolution noted with concern that “this distortion contributes to the devaluation of the perceived size of Africa, Latin America and South Asia and reinforces an unbalanced view of the world”.
He added that these distortions also contribute to the underestimation of social and economic realities, infrastructure needs and the development and prosperity potential of the southern regions, as well as fueling environmental, geopolitical and security biases.
France supports a campaign to “correct” the distortions
As an “act of epistemic justice and historical reparation,” the resolution proposes replacing the Mercator projection with a “flat Earth” projection that more accurately reflects the relative areas of the world’s regions.
In the Equal Earth map, which debuted at the North American Cartographic Informatics Society conference in 2018, Europe appears smaller, Brazil larger, Greenland shrinks dramatically and Africa appears relatively larger.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barro announced on Friday that France is “abandoning the Mercator projection” in favor of representations that more accurately reflect countries’ geographic areas, France 24 reported.
“The United States, Russia, and China have greater visibility than Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia,” Barrow said, adding that “distortions will eventually take hold” and that “it’s time to correct them.”
flat earth map
The UN vote comes after the African Union adopted the Flat Earth map in March and after Togo, on behalf of the African Union, asked UN member states in April to adopt the same map. A draft resolution was then prepared and the UN General Assembly held informal consultations on it in July.
“Africa, once shrunk on maps, now insists on being its true size, geographically, historically, morally, culturally, economically, diplomatically and globally,” Ama Tum-Amoa, the African Union Commissioner for Health, Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development, said in March.
New Zealand also criticized the Mercator map as a 2018 tourism campaign featuring then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern mocked that “New Zealand is disappearing from world maps” due to its location in the lower right corner of the map.
The Equal Earth map addresses this issue, with many versions available, including one that places Oceania at the center of the map rather than London Greenwich Mean Time, which has long been the standard for universal time and geographic reference around the world.
Digital mapping platforms such as Google Maps currently still use a version of the Mercator projection. The draft resolution calls on technology platforms to cooperate with UN member states and regional organizations and get the most accurate projections.
