The United Nations approved a resolution that encourages the replacement of the traditional Mercator projection with the Equal Earth projection, a world map that more accurately represents the true size of continents. The Equal Earth projection was developed in 2018 by Bojan Šavrič, Bernhard Jenny and Tom Patterson and aims to correct the distortions present in the Mercator projection, which was created in the 16th century for maritime navigation.
The main change highlighted by the resolution is the more faithful representation of the African continent, which appears much larger in the Equal Earth projection than in the traditional map. The African continent is about 14 times larger than Greenland, although in the Mercator projection both appear with similar sizes. This distortion occurs because the Mercator projection proportionally enlarges areas as they move away from the equator.
The resolution was approved amid discussions about the need for a more accurate and less biased geographical representation. The Mercator projection, although useful for navigation, has been criticized for decades for perpetuating a distorted view of the world, visually favoring countries in the Northern Hemisphere.
The Equal Earth maintains the familiar appearance of the world map, but with more balanced geographical proportions. The UN approval represents a significant step toward the adoption of a fairer and more accurate cartographic representation of the planet.
