UN adopts a new world map. By Aleksandra Michalska in the SMH.
The United Nations has voted to shift away from the 16th-century Mercator global map towards one more accurately reflecting countries’ true size, a resolution sponsored by African states to counter perceptions that the continent is peripheral.
Togo led the initiative to further the African Union campaign to limit use of the Mercator map, which distorts the relative size of land masses by expanding those nearer the poles. It makes Greenland appear roughly the same size as Africa, though Africa is about 14 times larger. …
The resolution passed in the UN General Assembly on Friday (US time) by a vote of 164 to 1, with 6 abstentions.
The US, the only country to vote against the resolution, said it promoted an “ideological agenda” and was a distraction from the “genuine problems of international peace, prosperity or good relations”.
The old map was the familiar Mercator map. Designed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 to help seafarers navigate the world, it preserves local angles and directions. A straight line on a Mercator map corresponds to a constant compass bearing, which made it invaluable for marine navigation.
It also preserves small-scale shapes reasonably well. A coastline, city street grid, or country outline looks locally familiar rather than being visibly squashed or stretched. That is one reason the projection became deeply entrenched in atlases and navigation.
It it works very neatly with rectangular map tiles and zooming systems.
The new map is called Equal Earth. It preserves area while trying to make the shapes not look too squished. Introduced in 2018, it was deliberately designed as a more aesthetically pleasing equal-area alternative. “Equal Earth” doesn’t mean it reproduces the globe without distortion — no flat world map can — but it guarantees equal area, while sacrificing some combination of shape, distance and direction.
For navigation or interactive street maps, Mercator is very useful. For comparing the geographic size of countries and continents, Equal Earth is much better.
Mercator stuck Flanders at the center of his map 🙂 Which required leaving off Antarctica and putting the equator about two thirds down the map.