The United Nations adopted a world map with real dimensions

The United Nations adopted a world map with real dimensions

🔸The United Nations General Assembly on Friday, 13 Shahrivar, by approving a resolution, recommended the use of a new map of the world that correctly shows the area of the continents, in which Africa is shown as larger and Europe and North America as smaller than in commonly used maps.

🔸The resolution was adopted with the support of 164 countries; the United States voted against it and six countries also abstained.

🔸The new map is based on a visualization technique known as “equal-earth” and is set to replace the Mercator projection.

🔸Common world maps are largely based on the Mercator projection, designed in 1569 for navigation. While this method accurately shows directions and angles, it distorts the size of landmasses; northern regions such as Europe and North America appear larger, and tropical regions such as Africa and the Middle East appear smaller.

🔸For example, in this map, Greenland appears to be almost the same size as Africa, while Africa is about 14 times larger. Critics say this distortion reinforces a Europe-centric perspective and have called for using maps that more accurately display the actual land area of continents.

🔸Togo, the proposer of the resolution, argued that maps are not merely technical tools and affect education and the public understanding of the place of countries and continents. According to the foreign minister of this country, the under-showing of countries in the Global South and especially Africa in the Mercator map reproduces an inaccurate image left over from the colonial era; therefore, Africa does not seek special privileges, but wants its real size and its share in the world to be properly reflected.

🔸The U.S. representative, in turn, called this action a sign of the United Nations’ diminishing credibility and said that, rather than addressing real problems, the General Assembly is debating maps from the sixteenth century.

🔸France, which was also among the supporters of the resolution, said it will also move away from using the Mercator projection. France’s foreign minister said that correcting the distorted depiction of the world, although it does not change reality, is “an action in the direction of truth.”