The United Nations General Assembly voted on Friday to adopt a new world map that reflects countries’ true relative sizes, after African nations urged the UN to right a centuries-old wrong.
The “Correct the Map” resolution –– put forward by African Union member states, as well as the Bahamas –– passed with overwhelming support: 164 member states voted in favor, six abstained and only the United States voted against it.
The resolution aims to give an “equitable” representation of the globe’s regions, particularly Africa, arguing that the distortions in the current world map mean the continent has undergone a “symbolic minimization” in people’s collective imagination.
At present, many of the world’s maps are based on the Mercator projection, created by European cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. It is widely used for navigation since the north-south lines have constant true bearings relative to the equator.
However, it is less useful as a world map since the scale is distorted, with countries further from the equator appearing disproportionately larger than those closest. For example, on the Mercator, Greenland appears larger than the continent of South America and appears similar in size to Africa.
In reality, Greenland is roughly the size of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Africa is 14 times the size of Greenland.
Some critics of the Mercator projection suspect it has remained widely used because it enlarges and centers Europe, as well as other Western regions such as North America, perpetuating ideas of European superiority.
The UN resolution notes “with concern that this distortion contributes to minimizing the perceived sizes of Africa, Latin America and South Asia, and perpetuating an unbalanced view of the world.”
It adds that the distortions also “contribute to minimizing the extent of socioeconomic realities, infrastructure needs, development potential and prosperity in the Southern regions, and that they can fuel prejudices in the environmental, geopolitical and security fields.”
France backs campaign to ‘correct’ distortions
The resolution therefore proposes, as an “act of cognitive justice and memorial reparation,” that the Mercator projection is replaced with the Equal Earth projection, which depicts the relative surface areas of the world’s regions more accurately.
In the Equal Earth, which was introduced at the 2018 North American Cartographic Information Society conference, Europe appears to shrink, Brazil balloons, and Greenland dramatically diminishes. Africa appears much larger in comparison.
France’s foreign affairs minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, announced Friday that France “will abandon the Mercator projection” in favor of representations that more accurately depict countries’ surface areas, state-owned TV network France 24 reported.
“The United States, Russia and China take on a disproportionate visual prominence compared to Africa, Latin America or southeast Asia,” Barrot said, adding that “distortions eventually take root in perceptions” and that “the time has come to correct them.”
The UN vote comes after the African Union adopted the Equal Earth Map in March and after Togo, on behalf of the AU, asked UN member states in April to do the same. As a result, a draft resolution was created and the UN General Assembly held informal consultations on it in July.
“Africa, once diminished on maps, now insists on being seen at its true scale – geographically, historically, morally, culturally, economically, diplomatically and globally,” Amma Twum-Amoah, commissioner for the AU’s Department of Health, Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development, said in a statement in March.
New Zealand has also taken issue with the Mercator map, with a tourism ad back in 2018 – featuring then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – joking that “New Zealand is disappearing off the world maps” due to its position in the bottom right-hand corner. The Equal Earth map addresses this, coming in various forms, including one that centers Oceania, rather than Greenwich, London. Greenwich has long been used as the standard for world time and global geographical reference.
Digital map platforms such as Google Maps also currently use a version of the Mercator projection. The draft resolution urges tech platforms to engage with UN member states and regional organizations and adopt the more accurate projection.
By CNN
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