The United Nations General Assembly voted on September 4 to encourage governments, schools and technology companies to move away from the centuries-old Mercator world map and adopt the Equal Earth projection instead, after African lobby groups argued the traditional design distorts the size of the continent.
The resolution, brought under the banner of the Correct The Map campaign, was carried by 164 member states, with six abstentions and only the United States voting against it. The United Kingdom was among the countries that supported the change.
The Mercator projection was designed in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator to help European explorers plot routes across the oceans. Because it is mathematically impossible to render a sphere accurately on a flat surface, the map shrinks land near the Equator and enlarges land near the poles. The effect is that Africa appears roughly the same size as Greenland on the map, even though the continent is actually around 14 times larger.
Origins of the Equal Earth projection
An alternative, the Equal Earth projection, was produced by a group of cartographers in 2018 and has since been used by NASA. It was adopted in February this year by the 54 member states of the African Union, which said it "more accurately represents the sizes of all continents, particularly Africa."
The Correct The Map campaign, set up by African lobby groups, says it would be possible to "fit the United States, China, India, Japan, Mexico and much of Europe into Africa and still have land to spare." It argues that "the Mercator map isn't just about misrepresenting the size of the global south, it's about power and perception."
'A narrative issue', campaigners say
Lerato Mogoatlhe of Africa No Filter, one of the groups behind the campaign, told the BBC that "Africa's misrepresentation on world maps is not just a cartographic error, it's a narrative issue." Kenyan geographer Kioko Muendo made a similar point, saying maps "are more than just guides for travellers, they shape how regions are perceived politically and economically."
At the General Assembly hearing in New York, Togo's foreign minister Robert Dussey argued for the resolution, which described dropping the Mercator design as an act of "cognitive justice and memorial reparation." He told delegates: "A fair world begins with a fair map. A map is never neutral. It shapes perceptions, influences how the place of peoples and continents in the world is understood."
US delegate dismisses resolution
The resolution was strongly opposed by US representative Yaryna Ferencevych, a member of the Senior Foreign Service who has previously served at American embassies in Afghanistan, Iraq and the UK. She told the hearing: "Instead of focusing on genuine problems of international peace, prosperity or good relations, this body is debating map projects from the 16th century and their role in promoting reparations and 'cognitive justice'."
She called the resolution part of "a much larger and more radical ideological project," adding: "This resolution mocks the work and purpose of this institution," and that resolutions like it "are like barnacles on our work here."
UN says Mercator map is not banned
In a statement published after the vote, the UN said the resolution "does not ban the Mercator projection or impose a replacement," but instead encourages the use of Equal Earth and other equal-area maps "when relative size matters," alongside teaching the limitations of any flat map of a spherical planet. It added that behind the technical debate "lies a larger argument about history and power: whether a map designed for European sailors in the 16th century has, over generations, distorted not only geography but perceptions of a whole, vast and complex continent."
A long-running debate
Doubts about the Mercator map first surfaced in the late 19th century as atlases became more widely available, and a backlash grew in the 1970s when critics said the map underestimated the development needs of what were then called Third World nations, dubbing it an act of "cartographic colonialism." The issue even reached prime-time television in 2001, when a fictional Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality confronted press secretary C.J. Cregg in an episode of the NBC drama The West Wing over the map's bias toward the northern hemisphere.
Some observers have suggested that President Donald Trump's interest in acquiring Greenland is partly fuelled by a Mercator-inflated sense of the territory's size, alongside its strategic military location. The White House is not expected to change the maps on the wall of the Oval Office any time soon.
