UN adopts new map with smaller US, bigger Africa

The United Nations General Assembly approved a new world map on Friday that increases the size of Africa while decreasing the size of North America and Europe. This move, aimed at providing a more precise depiction of continental landmasses, garnered support from 164 countries. However, the United States voted against the resolution, with six other states abstaining.

The new map, called the Equal Earth cartographic projection, is based on a projection designed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 for maritime navigation. Foreign Minister Robert Dussey of Togo, who proposed the resolution, emphasized that maps influence education, imagination, and collective perceptions, and are therefore never neutral.

If maps present an inaccurate image of the planet, they could perpetuate misrepresentations that are passed down through generations. The United States criticized the resolution, arguing that such actions contribute to the institution's loss of credibility and that the debate is outdated, focusing on projects from the 16th century and their role in promoting reparations and cognitive justice.

The Mercator projection, which prioritizes accurate shapes and angles of land masses, often inaccurately depicts relative sizes due to the challenge of transforming a three-dimensional globe into a two-dimensional map. It exaggerates the sizes of northern regions and underrepresents equatorial areas, making Europe and North America appear much larger while shrinking Africa and South America.

The Equal Earth projection, launched by a group of cartographers in 2018, aims to address this issue by preserving the relative surface areas of continents and attempting to accurately depict their shapes as they appear on a globe. France, which co-sponsored the resolution, announced that it would abandon the Mercator projection, noting that the United States, Russia, and China appear disproportionately large compared to Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia in the Mercator map.