The Mercator Map is the ubiquitous 2D depiction of Earth that we are familiar with – however, a United Nations
(UN) General Assembly resolution has opted to shift away from this distorted representation of our globe and adopt
alternative, more accurate world maps. Gerardus Mercator introduced his map for the purpose of maritime navigation
in 1569; it was favoured as a conformal map, meaning that it maintains angular properties. It achieved this using a
cylindrical projection where the longitudinal lines are transformed to lie equally spaced and parallel, while the latitudinal lines increase spacing with distance from the Equator; scale becomes compromised when direction is preserved in this fashion.
The map therefore disproportionately represents the area of continents – the most prominent misrepresentation is the scale of Africa, as Equatorial regions do not receive the same magnification as northern landmasses. Greenland, for example, is presented as equivalent in size to Africa, when in reality Africa is approximately 14 times larger. The prevalence of the Mercator Map in media and education has influenced generations of students’ understanding of world geography, potentially contributing to misconceptions that persist into adulthood like the relative importance and size of world regions.
On Friday 4 September 2026, the UN endorsed a resolution promoting world map projections that more accurately
represent the true size of landmasses. It followed the “Correct the Map” campaign led by Togo, which emphasised how
Mercator’s distortions have “contributed to symbolic minimisation of Africa and perpetuated an unbalanced view of the
world.” The resolution passed, supported by 164 nations with a sole opposing vote from the US and six abstentions.
As a non-confining resolution, this development does not prohibit the Mercator Map, but rather encourages schools,
governments, international organisations, and technology companies to consider equal-area maps, like the EqualEarth
projection, created by cartographers in 2018. The resolution also emphasises the importance of teaching the limitations of any flat map in representing a spheroid planet, as no projection can perfectly reproduce a curved surface on a plane.
The Mercator Map holds strong associations with colonial expansion and imperialism. This advancement in cartography may therefore play a crucial role in contending these dominant narratives and decolonising geography. The EqualEarth map represents landmasses according to their relative sizes rather than exaggerating higher-latitude regions in a Eurocentric image. This uprooting of bias has the potential to influence political and cultural attitudes, particularly regarding the Global North and Global South.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.
