Can you guess the real size of each country on the new world map?

Pick which country is bigger, then watch it morph from Mercator to Equal Earth projection to see how close you were.

The Mercator projection versus the Equal Earth projection [Al Jazeera]

The map of Africa is much larger than most people think. However, most classroom maps and atlases still understate it – a distortion embedded in the Mercator projection that has shaped world maps for more than four centuries.

The distortion in question is not subtle. On a Mercator map, which was designed for European colonial exploration and maritime trade in the 16th century, Greenland appears roughly the size of Africa, which is actually about 14 times larger.

The exaggeration increases the farther you travel from the equator, so it falls almost entirely on one half of the world, inflating Europe, including Russia, and North America while shrinking Africa, Latin America and South Asia.

To address this, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted 164 to 1 on Friday to adopt a resolution promoting the Equal Earth projection, which shows continents in their true proportions, as an alternative to Mercator.

Led by Togo on behalf of the African Group and backed by the African Union, it encourages schools, institutions and tech companies to switch, correcting the shrinking of Africa and other equatorial regions. The African Group is the largest regional voting and dialogue bloc at the UN, consisting of 54 African Union member states.

Map quiz: Pick the bigger country

See it for yourself: pick which country is bigger, then watch it morph from Mercator to Equal Earth to see how close you were.

How did countries vote?

The United States was the only country to vote against the resolution calling the measure a “radical ideological project”. Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova and Ukraine abstained.

US representative Yaryna Ferencevych said before the vote that the resolution is “the reason this institution is losing its credibility”. “Instead of focusing on genuine problems … this body is debating map projects from the 16th century,” she said.

Friday’s resolution is nonbinding, intended only to encourage the world’s default maps to change. The UN said it does not ban Mercator or impose a replacement, but simply encourages wider use of the Equal Earth projection.

Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey told the UNGA that maps shape education, imagination and collective perception, and that the resolution affirms African reality.

The African Union adopted Equal Earth in March. Togo is planning a meeting in Lome early next year, with UNESCO, the African Union and technology companies including Google, to work out what implementation looks like in practice.

Every flat map lies because the Earth is a sphere and no projection can flatten it without distorting something: shape, area, distance or direction.

Gerardus Mercator, a cartographer and geographer who published the world map in 1569, chose to preserve angles and straight bearings, a trade-off that made sense for 16th-century ships but has kept shaping perceptions of the world for nearly 500 years since. Equal Earth makes the opposite trade-off, preserving true area so continents can be compared honestly, at the cost of slightly bending their outlines.

选择哪个国家面积更大，然后观察它从墨卡托投影变为等距地球投影，看看你的选择有多接近。

墨卡托投影与等距地球投影 [半岛电视台]

非洲的实际面积远比大多数人想象的要大。然而，大多数课堂地图和地图集仍然低估了非洲的面积——这种扭曲源于墨卡托投影法，而墨卡托投影法已经影响了世界地图长达四个多世纪。

这种变形并不细微。在16世纪为欧洲殖民探险和海上贸易而设计的墨卡托投影地图上，格陵兰岛看起来与非洲的面积大致相同，而非洲的实际面积大约是格陵兰岛的14倍。

离赤道越远，夸张程度就越大，因此几乎完全集中在世界的一半，欧洲（包括俄罗斯）和北美被夸大，而非洲、拉丁美洲和南亚则被缩小。

为了解决这个问题，联合国大会（联大）于周五以 164 票赞成、1 票反对通过了一项决议，推广“平等地球投影”，该投影以真实的比例显示各大洲，作为墨卡托投影的替代方案。

该项目由多哥代表非洲集团牵头，并得到非洲联盟的支持，旨在鼓励学校、机构和科技公司进行数字化转型，以扭转非洲及其他赤道地区日益萎缩的局面。非洲集团是联合国最大的区域投票和对话集团，由54个非洲联盟成员国组成。

地图测验：选出面积较大的国家

自己看看：选择哪个国家更大，然后观察它从墨卡托投影到等距地球投影的变化，看看你的选择有多接近。

各国如何投票？

美国是唯一投反对票的国家，称该决议是一项“激进的意识形态工程”。塞尔维亚、爱沙尼亚、格鲁吉亚、立陶宛、摩尔多瓦和乌克兰投了弃权票。

美国众议员亚琳娜·费伦采维奇在投票前表示，这项决议是“该机构失去信誉的原因”。她说：“该机构不去关注真正的问题……反而还在讨论16世纪的地图项目。”

周五的决议不具约束力，其目的仅在于鼓励世界各国更改默认地图。联合国表示，该决议并非禁止墨卡托投影或强制使用其他投影方式，而只是鼓励更广泛地使用“平等地球”投影。

多哥外交部长罗伯特·杜西在联合国大会上表示，地图塑造了教育、想象力和集体认知，该决议肯定了非洲的现实。

非洲联盟于今年3月通过了《平等地球》倡议。多哥计划明年初在洛美召开一次会议，联合国教科文组织、非洲联盟以及包括谷歌在内的多家科技公司将出席会议，共同探讨该倡议在实践中的落实方式。

所有平面地图都是错误的，因为地球是球体，任何投影都无法在不扭曲形状、面积、距离或方向的情况下将其展平。

制图师兼地理学家杰拉德·墨卡托于1569年出版了世界地图。他选择保留角度和直线方位，这种权衡对于16世纪的航海来说合情合理，但此后近500年来，它一直影响着人们对世界的认知。Equal Earth则采取了相反的权衡，它保留了各大洲的真实面积，以便进行公平的比较，但代价是略微弯曲了它们的轮廓。