What different world maps get right – and what they get wrong
The United Nations has adopted a resolution calling for the widely used Mercator world map to be replaced with a projection that more fairly represents the true size of continents, after criticism that the centuries-old map distorts perceptions of regions such as Africa. The "Correct the Map" resolution, passed by the UN General Assembly, addresses long-standing concerns that the Mercator projection, created in 1569 to aid ocean navigation, makes landmasses near the poles appear far larger relative to those near the equator than they really are.
Under the Mercator map, Africa appears roughly the same size as Greenland, despite being about 14 times larger in reality, a distortion critics such as Kenyan geographer Kioko Muendo say has downplayed the continent's resources, population and economic significance. The UN has instead adopted the Equal Earth projection, developed by cartographers in 2018 and already used by 54 African Union member states, which more accurately depicts land area but sacrifices the straight navigational lines that made Mercator's map so useful, and cannot be used to measure true distances. Experts note that no flat map can perfectly preserve area, shape and distance simultaneously, as demonstrated by other alternatives such as the 1970s Peters projection, which corrects size distortions but skews the shapes of landmasses.
- UN adopts Equal Earth map to replace the size-distorting Mercator projection
- Mercator map wrongly shows Africa as similar in size to Greenland
- No flat map can perfectly preserve area, shape and distance at once
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Advocates argue that maps are not neutral tools but shape perception, and that a projection which visually shrinks Africa, Latin America and South Asia while inflating Europe and North America has, over centuries, subtly reinforced a sense of these regions' lesser importance in trade, politics and the popular imagination. Adopting a projection such as Equal Earth, they contend, is a modest, low-cost correction that brings classroom and public maps into line with reality, gives fairer visual weight to the Global South's true scale and population, and reflects the preference already expressed by the African Union's member states. They see this as updating a 16th-century navigational tool that was never meant for general geographic education into something more honest for its actual modern use.
The case against
Sceptics of the change, while not defending distortion for its own sake, point out that the Mercator projection was designed to solve a specific and still-valuable problem, preserving accurate compass bearings and angles for maritime and aviation navigation, and that no flat projection, including Equal Earth or Peters, can represent area, shape and distance simultaneously without trade-offs of its own. They caution against reading too much political or racial intent into a mathematical necessity of cartography, note that Mercator has long since been abandoned for general reference and educational maps in most serious contexts, and worry that a UN resolution framing this as a moral correction risks overstating the influence of map projections on real-world attitudes while diverting attention from more direct causes of global inequality.