The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

https://newworldsize.com/old-vs-new/compare/africa-vs-greenl...

Huh? Are you a Flat Earth believer? We can literally see the countries from space. The problem wasn't that we don't know how big they are but that, as your parent explains, it is not possible to have a flat map which accurately depicts a (roughly) spherical terrain. A flat map has to be "wrong" in some sense and this change picks a map which made a trade off that favours accurate size (e.g. ratio between size of Greenland and Africa)

This is a correction to that.

And they are from "other parts of world" namely Afrika. The only country that objectrd, for purely culture war reasons was Amerika.

But still, it's not a red flag in this particular example.

It is also used by the military (or at least NATO). They use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Transverse_Mercator_...

While most of that system is a way to tag coordinates that are "simpler" than just latitude and longitude to a position, it's underlying system is also the Mercator projection. And some properties of Mercator, e.g. that it is angle-correct. So you can use UTM e.g. in Elint for direction finding.

It's not distance or area correct, but for normal infantry this is meaningless, since this only shows on large scales, but not the slow scales of infantry.

From my side of the world (Europe), this whole "Mercator projection is associated with colonialism" drama seems to have originated a couple of years ago in the US and was mostly amplified by artificial social media outrage.

Because the resolution specifically talks about the supposed injustice Mercator has perpetrated upon Africa over the centuries, and loudly trumpets that adopting Equal Earth is an act of reparation toward Africa.

“Noting the proclamation by the African Union of 2025 as the year of “Justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations”, and decision Assembly/AU/Dec.942 (XXXIX), adopted by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union in February 2026 in Addis Ababa, endorsing the period 2026–2035 as a decade of action dedicated to justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations,”

“Noting with satisfaction the adoption by the African Union of the Equal Earth cartographic projection, which more accurately represents the sizes of all continents, particularly Africa,”

“Convinced that correcting cartographic distortions of continental sizes constitutes an act of cognitive justice and memorial reparation, understood as promoting accurate geographical knowledge, as well as historical truth, education and awareness-raising, and promotes mutual understanding among peoples,”

“Affirms that cartographic distortions of continental sizes inherited from history have cognitive, educational, cultural, geopolitical and socioeconomic impacts and constitute historical biases, the correction of which will promote recognition, justice and development, particularly with regard to the African continent;”

“Recognizes that the Mercator projection, widely used around the world, particularly distorts, from the perspective of area representation, continental masses located far from the equator, resulting in a proportional shrinkage of Africa and other regions;”

https://docs.un.org/en/A/80/L.104

The causality you gloss over seems to be more important than the causality you'd like us to focus on. The ships came first.

Empire -> need for chronometers -> chronometers.

...OTH if Britain wouldn't have been a globe-spanning empire, they wouldn't have needed a more precise way to measure longitude, and probably wouldn't have invented it ;)

E.g. the Brits had built a whole government body around the task, which then resulted in a competition, with Harrison's chronometer coming out as winner:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Longitude

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Tahoe#Interstate_boundary...

In summary there is a border dispute between California and Nevada, It was exacerbated by some surveying errors but the real problem appears to be the definitions of the sate borders, California was defined using one method(120 degrees longitude west of Greenwich) and Nevada was defined using another method (37 degrees longitude west of Washington) at the time it was thought these two methods were equivalent but it later turned out they are not. Congress does not have the authority to change state borders so it is up to the states to reach an agreement. and they have not. So the dispute is still technically on going.

Researching this also lead to the most hilarious passive aggressive thing I have seen in a constitution.

"All territory lying West of and adjoining the boundary line herein prescribed, which the State of California may relinquish to the Territory or State of Nevada, shall thereupon be embraced within and constitute a part of this State."

We really wanted that area east of the Sierra Nevada mountains, they would form a perfect natural boundary, but CA has already claimed it. If CA ever wants to give it up we want to make sure it is explicitly in the constitution to accept it.

Mercator is far more globally evenhanded in that regard, being a cylindrical projection.

Other map projections (we have hundreds!) compromise on other things to improve on others. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projections

So yes, we definitely NEED compromise and not some strongman that says, due to limited knowledge "it is how it is, forever".

Will countries actually change their map projections? That has yet to be seen. Maybe they will, maybe they won't That has yet to be seen.

An equal area projection map is obviously valuable. But it's practically asinine to pick a projection that distorts land features when there are several equal area projections that do not.

Further, Ukraine had to abstain from this vote because they shoehorned in something ridiculous considering the official position of the UN members that Crimea is Ukraine [1], and Crimea is depicted as outside of Ukraine.

I have no idea if there are other hidden yet important changes, since there is hardly any commentary apart from size and shape.

[1] https://ukraine-war-analytics.com/history/international-reco...

Equal earth also has its uses, it's a neat and clean map, but has more distortion in shape, which might be undesirable.

The UN's explicit purpose is to try and prevent conflict. One of the requirements to join is to renounce the right to use force in international relations except in self-defense.

They do that in a number of ways. One of those is to have these types of symbolic votes. The hope is that by having where everyone stands out in the open, whether on silly things or serious things, it will reduce conflict. Does it work? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Obviously world peace hasn't been achieved. It probably never will be. Nonetheless, that is the goal of the UN. They want to try to fix conflicts.

It kinda is, it also have powers to authorize invasions. Not that any of this works in practice, but that's what is for.

What sort of tasks besides a size measuring contest is an equal area projection good for?

Precisely why, I suspect, the US voted against the change. (One of the reasons, at least) I mean, gee, I wonder why the country with the world's largest navy* would prefer maps where you can draw a line on the map between two points and it's the actual compass direction? (Give or take a bit of weirdness near the poles, where the difference between the Earth's rotational pole and its magnetic pole actually matters in a way it doesn't matter below the polar circles).

It's just a symbolic vote, of course, and nobody's navy is going to stop using the so-useful-for-maritime-navigation Mercator just because of this UN vote. But still, I would bet that factored into the reasoning. How much? Who knows, I certainly couldn't say. Except to suspect that it was a non-trivial factor.

* Largest by tonnage — China and Russia have more total ships, with the US in third place by ship count, but the US has nearly half the number of aircraft carriers in the entire world, 11 out of a total of 23, and aircraft carriers are some of the heaviest ships out there. Numbers are from https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/largest-n...

My teachers had to remind students so many times that the size for Greenland was just way off but it was hard for that to sink in for a kid used to seeing it every single day.

Africa is 14x larger, but near the same size on the maps our leaders have grown up with for 80+ years.

This has clearly influenced geopolitics. Which is the point of the UN. Which is just a container for what the countries of the world want to agree on. When the UN "doesn't work" for some thing it is because the countries of the world don't want to work together for that thing.

Well better really. It is a cylindrical projection, so it's more like "Mercator before it's unrolled".

Fortunately Google Earth is still a sphere not a cyllinder.

That also happens to be broadly what you would get looking straight down at the earth from above that point, which seems like it would also be the least confusing option.

Maps are extremely powerful signs because they implicitly claim to organize the physical world. Consider, for example, the reference viewpoint of a map regardless of other features.

The first time you see a map centered on another continent makes you realize that your vision of the world, where some parts are peripheral, is relative. Even if that fact is obvious.

I don't know exactly what the effects of a change of projection are, but I know they exist.

If anything, I expect the accurate sizes set the stage for feeling superiority over their ancestors colonizing huge lands while coming from tiny countries.

If we're talking about kids, they should just get taught this type of geography using a globe. You can get an accurate (enough) inflatable globe for like 3 euros, including shipping.

Ancient mediterranean maps often were South up, as well as maps of Islamic cartoghraphers.

There were also Roman road maps which were entirely schematic, more like our modern public transport maps (e.g. such maps only cared about how locations were connected by roads and their distances, but not about any geographical mapping)

> I think it is actually you now that tries to impose this load onto the term, not the original name givers of the projection.

Certainly “equal” is a perfectly normal word used normally in all sorts of circumstances, including equal‐area map projections. That said, while I wouldn’t call it “baggage,” it’s impossible to separate the Equal Earth projection from the context in which it was created: the previous most notorious equal‐area projection, Gall–Peters, was heavily pushed (both when it was popularized in the 1970s and when it regained a surge of popularity in the 2010s/2020s) by promoting the idea that use of non‐equal‐area projections causes westerners to subconsciously internalize feelings of superiority over the poor oppressed Global South based on the distorted size of their home countries on a map. This idea is, shall we say, controversial and not universally accepted. But if you read the original UN resolution that was voted on, it’s clear that the UN representatives believe it (or say they believe it, anyway).

In that context, it seems absolutely clear that the name “Equal Earth” was a very intentional double entendre by the authors of the projection. I don’t fault the authors for coming up with such a catchy name, but I feel strongly it’s important to push back against the false idea that establishing use of equal‐area projections is some meaningful act of restorative social justice.