Equal Earth vs Mercator

Kapatau pointing to the Altai Mountains. Living in the 1600s, did he know how big Russia was compared with anywhere else?

How much does the Mercator projection influence my perception of the relative size of countries? There’s a flurry of comment at present around the UN push to adopt the Equal Earth Map rather than the Mercator projection. What are these? And why are they important?

To start at the beginning, the earth is a three dimensional object that humans want to portray in two dimensions to help them move around. Globes are pretty things to have in your lounge but are impractical for navigation. Humans started drawing maps millennia ago because they needed to know how to get from place A to place B reliably. The oldest drawing that is thought to be a map is of an area in the now Czech Republic. It is 25,000 years old and drawn on a mammoth tusk.

Early maps didn’t take the curvature of the earth into account because no one knew the earth was round rather than flat. In addition, the curvature didn’t matter much because people were mapping small areas. However, since the age of Classical Greece (in the 4th century BC, when Aristotle figured out the world is more-or-less spherical), maps of large regions, and especially the whole planet, have been projected from a model globe to control how the inevitable distortion is apportioned on the map. The Mercator Projection was first presented by Flemish geographer and mapmaker Gerardus Mercator in 1569. In the 18th century, it became the standard map projection for navigation. However, when the Mercator is applied to world maps, it inflates the size of areas distant from the equator e.g. Greenland, Antarctica, the Russian and Canadian Arctic areas all appear far larger than they actually are, relative to landmasses near the equator. The Mercator was useful for navigation because inherently curved longitudinal and latitudinal lines are projected as straight, parallel lines. However, the Mercator is not so useful if you want to know the real size of landmasses or oceans.

I’ve always known about the Mercator projection distortions and taken them for granted. No map will be perfect, and the relative size of countries doesn’t seem that important. My understanding of global geography is largely gained by experience. I retain relatively little about geography, particularly the relationships between adjoining countries, until I have physically been in a place and, preferably, cycled or walked across it.

However, African countries have long been concerned by the underrepresentation of their landmass in the Mercator which makes Africa look the same size as Greenland. It’s not! See the figure below.

Therefore, in 2026, African Union member states and The Bahamas proposed UN member states adopt a different projection, the Equal Earth projection, which maintains the relative areas of landmasses and seas. The Equal Earth Map is a global map projection invented by Bojan Šavrič, Bernhard Jenny, and Tom Patterson in 2018. It keeps latitudinal lines parallel while curving longitudinal lines.

The UN Correct the Map resolution was adopted on September 4th at the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly. It encourages UN member states to adopt the Equal Earth map or similar equal earth projections. Of the 193 member states of the UN, 164 voted in favour of the resolution, six abstained (Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine) and one voted against (United States).

Why did some countries not vote for the change? While Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania and Moldova didn’t give reasons:

United States: described the resolution as an inappropriate use of General Assembly attention and objected to a “broader ideological agenda connected by proponents to reparations and cognitive justice”. To put this in context, Togo stated the following in their explanation: this resolution “recognises and affirms that disproportionate cartographic representations, particularly those resulting from the Mercator projection, have had lasting cognitive, educational, cultural, geopolitical and socioeconomic effects, contributing to a drastic reduction in the perceived size of Africa and other regions of the world in the global collective imagination”.

Ukraine: Ukraine supported scientifically accurate area representation but objected to political-boundary depictions associated with third-party Equal Earth maps, particularly their treatment of Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia; Crimea is in a different colour from the rest of Ukraine.

Serbia: Serbia supported the central cartographic objective but said, without specifics, that political maps associated with Equal Earth were inconsistent with international law and UN standards.

I would like, at this point, to raise the issue of New Zealand being depicted at the very edge of the world. That’s where we’ve always been, a skinny strip on the right hand side. On the Equal Earth map, we are an even skinnier strip than before. New Zealand is referred to in films as somewhere a character runs away to, at the far end of the world. How much has that been influenced by the Mercator? We aren’t at the end of anywhere because the planet is roughly spherically (although it’s actually a bit bulgy and pushes out at the equator while being flatter at the poles).

How Eurocentric to project the globe with Europe in the middle. I suppose such a projection is acceptable to most countries as few are pushed so far out to the edges as New Zealand. There are no citizens of Antarctica to complain that landmass looks like a long thin strip. And not too many people in the Russian far east who are worried about whether the world thinks they are important.

Here are other ways of looking at the globe in 2D, helpfully provided by Equal Earth. New Zealand could be front and centre. We could be front and centre and top. Make New Zealand greater than before! MNZGTB!!!

Based on Africa’s arguments, New Zealand would be far better off with a different map showing us as central to everywhere. And up top might be even better. Are the colonial projections the cause of our faltering economy? However, on the flip side, Trump has been very keen on taking over Greenland. Could that be because he thinks Greenland is as big as Africa? Will he now be more interested in taking over Africa? There are times when you don’t want to be seen as large or important. Maybe it’s best to let this one pass and stay relegated to the edge of the planetary representations.