UN votes to replace Mercator map with Equal Earth
A Compass
Rose and a Hall of Mirrors
A sailor trusts a compass needle to point north. A student trusts a classroom map to show the world as it is. Both instruments can be perfectly reliable for one purpose and quietly misleading for another.
For roughly 450 years, one image of the world has hung in classrooms, appeared in atlases, and powered the maps on our phones. [1] That image is the Mercator projection, presented by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. It draws the meridians — the vertical lines that run pole to pole — as straight, parallel lines. That single design choice makes navigation with a compass easy.
The same choice distorts size. The Mercator projection stretches land masses more and more as they approach the poles. Nearly 70% of the world’s land lies north of the Equator, so the stretching falls hardest on the Northern Hemisphere. [1] Canada and Russia appear far larger than they are. Greenland and Africa look comparable in size, even though Africa’s area is about 14 times larger than Greenland’s. [1]
That mismatch matters because people tend to confuse size with importance. Derek Alderman, a geographer at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, puts it plainly: maps do not simply identify the location of places. [2] They also exist as social texts which influence how we imagine the importance, centrality or peripheral position of places.
The Assembly Hall Where the Map Changed
In 2023, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution that, for the first time, explicitly called on member states to address the naming and representation of geographical features in ways that reflect accurate and equitable global perspectives. [3] The resolution endorses the Equal Earth projection instead, which shows the relative sizes of land masses more accurately by curving the meridians. [3] The proposal was supported by a coalition of African nations and geography researchers, who argued that shrinking Africa affects how the continent is perceived in media, education and policy. [3] Their argument: shrinking Africa affects how the continent is perceived in media, education and policy.
The resolution was adopted without a formal vote, reflecting broad consensus among member states on the need for more equitable geographical representation.
Melinda Laituri, a geographer at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, sees the shift as more than a technical fix. Changing the projection used for global representation has geographic, educational and symbolic significance, she says.
The Next Step the Researchers Name
Bernhard Jenny, a cartographer at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and co-creator of the Equal Earth projection, points to a 2009 research article showing that map readers do not tend to compensate for distortions even when they know those distortions exist. The effect of the Mercator projection on people’s mental map of the world is difficult to quantify, he says. It was a common assumption among cartographers that the Mercator projection has strong cultural influence and may be doing irreparable damage to our ability to think accurately about the world.
The Equal Earth projection, developed in 2018, is not flawless. Because every map is a projection from the 3D globe onto a 2D surface, all of them distort shapes, distances, areas and directions. Equal Earth trades some shape and angle accuracy for better area accuracy.
How widely the Equal Earth projection will be used remains to be seen. The Mercator projection will still be useful in some scientific applications. The resolution itself is a formal endorsement by the General Assembly, and the beginning of a phase-out whose pace and reach are still open.
Sources
1. DOI: 10.1038/d41586-026-02820-x