The United Nations General Assembly gave the ‘green light’ this Friday to a resolution presented by Togo and supported by the African Union to abandon the use of the Mercator map projection and replace it with one that more accurately shows the size of continents such as Africa or regions like Latin America.
The text – approved with 164 votes in favor and one against, that of the United States, with six abstentions – refers to the fact that “cartographic distortions in the size of continents, inherited from history, have contributed to misconceptions, particularly leading to a symbolic minimization of Africa in the collective imagination.”
Likewise, the document emphasizes “the need to promote more accurate and scientifically based cartographic representations of the globe,” while also encouraging Member States, international organizations, and other relevant entities to adopt the Equal Earth projection, which shows countries and continents with their proportional sizes.
“The map is never a neutral object. It shapes the imagination, influences the perception of the place occupied by peoples and continents in the world and, sometimes from the school stage onwards, can maintain representations that do not correspond to geographical reality,” defended the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Togo, Robert Dussey, before the vote during a meeting with the permanent representatives of the Member States of the African Union (AU).
The design, introduced by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 to facilitate navigation, remains the global standard despite increasing distortion as a geographic region moves away from the equator.
According to the text voted on in the Assembly, the Mercator projection contributes to minimizing the perception of the size of Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, and to perpetuating an unbalanced view of the world. In contrast, in the Equal Earth model, presented in 2018, the real proportions of the regions are accurately preserved, offering a fair and visually balanced representation.
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