UN Approves Move Away from Familiar World Map: Africa Set to Look Bigger

The United Nations has passed a resolution calling for an end to the use of the traditional Mercator map projection in favour of a more accurate depiction of continental sizes. The measure was backed by 164 countries, including Czechia and most European states, along with — somewhat unexpectedly — Russia. Only the United States voted against it.

"A fair world begins with a fair map," Togo's Foreign Minister Robert Dussey told Reuters. Togo was the country that spearheaded the campaign.

Why Africa Looked Smaller Than It Really Is

The resolution is the outcome of an African Union campaign against the Mercator projection, which distorts countries' true proportions by inflating the size of landmasses closer to the poles. As a result, Greenland appears on conventional maps to be almost as large as Africa, even though Africa is actually about 14 times bigger. Russia, too, will shrink on the new maps.

A Change.org petition backing the #CorrectTheMap campaign, which has gathered more than 11,000 signatures, notes that at the correct scale, "Africa could fit the United States, China, India, Japan, Mexico and most of Europe — with room to spare."

US Opposed, Six Countries Abstain

A US representative called the resolution "excessive," arguing that it pushes an "ideological agenda" and distracts from "real issues of international peace, prosperity and good relations."

Six countries abstained from the vote — Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Lithuania, Estonia and Serbia. Ukraine explained its stance by noting that some versions of the cartographic materials for the Equal Earth projection, on which the new maps are based, depict Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories, including Crimea, in a way that violates the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity and contradicts previous UN resolutions.

The current projection was created in the 16th century by cartographer and mathematician Gerardus Mercator for use in maritime navigation. Togo's Minister Dussey linked the campaign for a new world map to broader efforts by African nations to reassess their colonial legacy, stressing that it is not intended as an attack on Europe or any other civilisation.

Source: novinky.cz