UN to vote on adopting new map that would make our world look very different

The United Nations General Assembly is voting Friday on whether to adopt a new world map that reflects countries’ true relative sizes, after African nations urged the UN to right a centuries-old wrong.

The “Correct the Map” draft resolution – put forward by African Union member states, as well as the Bahamas – aims to give an “equitable” representation of the globe’s regions, particularly Africa. According to the draft, the distortions in the current world map mean Africa has undergone a “symbolic minimization” in people’s collective imagination.

At present, many of the world’s maps are based on the Mercator projection, created by European cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. It is widely used for navigation since the north-south lines have constant true bearings relative to the equator.

BardoczPeter/Getty Images

However, it is less useful as a world map since the scale is distorted, with countries further from the equator appearing disproportionately larger than those closest. For example, on the Mercator, Greenland appears larger than the continent of South America and appears similar in size to Africa.

In reality, Greenland is roughly the size of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Africa is 14 times the size of Greenland.

Some critics of the Mercator projection suspect it has remained widely used because it enlarges and centers Europe, as well as other Western regions such as North America, perpetuating ideas of European superiority.

The draft UN resolution notes “with concern that this distortion contributes to minimizing the perceived sizes of Africa, Latin America and South Asia, and perpetuating an unbalanced view of the world.”

It adds that the distortions also “contribute to minimizing the extent of socioeconomic realities, infrastructure needs, development potential and prosperity in the Southern regions, and that they can fuel prejudices in the environmental, geopolitical and security fields.”

The resolution therefore proposes, as an “act of cognitive justice and memorial reparation,” that the Mercator projection is replaced with the Equal Earth projection, which depicts the relative surface areas of the world’s regions more accurately.

In the Equal Earth, which was introduced at the 2018 North American Cartographic Information Society conference, Europe appears to shrink, Brazil balloons, and Greenland dramatically diminishes. Africa appears much larger in comparison.

France’s foreign affairs minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, announced Friday that France “will abandon the Mercator projection” in favor of representations that more accurately depict countries’ surface areas, state-owned TV network France 24 reported .

“The United States, Russia and China take on a disproportionate visual prominence compared to Africa, Latin America or southeast Asia,” Barrot said, adding that “distortions eventually take root in perceptions” and that “the time has come to correct them.”

The UN vote comes after the African Union adopted the Equal Earth Map in March and after Togo, on behalf of the AU, asked UN member states in April to do the same. As a result, a draft resolution was created and the UN General Assembly held informal consultations on it in July.

What’s the real size of Africa? How Western states used maps to downplay size of continent

“Africa, once diminished on maps, now insists on being seen at its true scale – geographically, historically, morally, culturally, economically, diplomatically and globally,” Amma Twum-Amoah, commissioner for the AU’s Department of Health, Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development, said in a statement in March.

New Zealand has also taken issue with the Mercator map, with a tourism ad back in 2018 – featuring then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – joking that “New Zealand is disappearing off the world maps” due to its position in the bottom right-hand corner.

The Equal Earth map addresses this, coming in various forms, including one that centers Oceania, rather than Greenwich, London. Greenwich has long been used as the standard for world time and global geographical reference.

Digital map platforms such as Google Maps also currently use a version of the Mercator projection. The draft resolution urges tech platforms to engage with UN member states and regional organizations and adopt the more accurate projection.

联合国大会将于周五投票表决是否通过一幅反映各国真实相对大小的新世界地图。此前，非洲各国敦促联合国纠正一个延续了几个世纪的错误。

由非洲联盟成员国和巴哈马共同提出的“修正地图”决议草案旨在“公平”地展现全球各区域，特别是非洲的面貌。草案指出，当前世界地图的扭曲意味着非洲在人们的集体想象中已被“象征性地弱化”。

目前，世界上的许多地图都是基于墨卡托投影，该投影由欧洲制图师杰拉杜斯·墨卡托于 1569 年创建。由于南北线相对于赤道具有恒定的真方位角，因此它被广泛用于航海。

BardoczPeter/Getty Images

然而，由于比例尺失真，墨卡托投影作为世界地图的实用性较差。远离赤道的国家看起来比靠近赤道的国家要大得多。例如，在墨卡托投影图中，格陵兰岛看起来比南美洲大陆大，与非洲的大小相近。

事实上，格陵兰岛的面积与刚果民主共和国大致相当，而非洲的面积是格陵兰岛的 14 倍。

一些批评墨卡托投影法的人怀疑，它之所以被广泛使用，是因为它扩大了欧洲以及北美等其他西方地区，并将它们置于中心位置，从而延续了欧洲优越论。

联合国决议草案“关切地指出，这种扭曲导致人们对非洲、拉丁美洲和南亚的规模认知不足，并助长了对世界的不平衡看法”。

报告还指出，这些扭曲事实“有助于淡化南方地区的社会经济现实、基础设施需求、发展潜力和繁荣程度，并可能助长环境、地缘政治和安全领域的偏见”。

因此，该决议提议，作为“认知正义和纪念补偿行为”，用“平等地球投影”取代墨卡托投影，后者能更准确地描绘世界各区域的相对表面积。

在2018年北美制图信息学会会议上推出的“平等地球”模型中，欧洲看起来缩小了，巴西膨胀了，格陵兰岛则大幅缩减。相比之下，非洲显得大得多。

据法国国家电视台France 24报道，法国外交部长让-诺埃尔·巴罗周五宣布，法国“将放弃墨卡托投影”，转而采用能够更准确地描绘国家面积的投影方式。

巴罗特说：“与非洲、拉丁美洲或东南亚相比，美国、俄罗斯和中国在视觉上显得格外突出。”他还补充说，“这种扭曲最终会在人们的认知中扎根”，“现在是时候纠正这些认知了”。

联合国此次投票是在非洲联盟于3月通过《平等地球地图》之后进行的，此前，多哥代表非盟于4月呼吁联合国成员国也这样做。随后，一份决议草案形成，联合国大会于7月就此举行了非正式磋商。

非洲的真实面积有多大？西方国家如何利用地图淡化非洲大陆的面积？

“非洲曾经在地图上被缩小，现在它坚持要以它真正的规模来看待——在地理、历史、道德、文化、经济、外交和全球层面，”非盟卫生、人道主义事务和社会发展部专员阿玛·图姆-阿莫阿在3月份的一份声明中说。

新西兰也对墨卡托投影地图提出了异议。2018 年，新西兰政府发布了一则旅游广告，时任总理杰辛达·阿德恩在广告中开玩笑说，由于新西兰位于世界地图的右下角，“新西兰正在从世界地图上消失”。

“平等地球”地图正是为了解决这个问题而绘制的，它有多种版本，其中一种以大洋洲而非伦敦格林威治为中心。格林威治长期以来一直被用作世界时间和全球地理参考的标准。

谷歌地图等数字地图平台目前也使用墨卡托投影。该决议草案敦促科技平台与联合国成员国和区域组织合作，采用更精确的投影方式。