We’ve all known it from school desks, and for generations it has been the world map par excellence. Yet, when you look at it, Greenland and Africa appear to be similar in size, while Russia, Canada, and Northern Europe occupy enormous portions of the map. And there’s even a detail that completely changes the perspective: in reality, Africa is about 14 times larger than Greenland!
The reason isn’t a geographic error, but a question of cartography. The Earth’s curved surface must be transferred onto a plane, and any projection inevitably entails some distortion. The Mercator projection, developed in 1569, was designed mainly for navigation and preserves angles and directions, but at the cost of progressively enlarging landmasses as one moves toward the poles.
Now, however, that representation could lose its role as the world’s standard map. On September 4, 2026 the UN General Assembly approved with 164 votes in favor, one against and six abstentions a resolution promoted by Togo to encourage the use of cartographic representations that are more faithful to the real proportions of the continents, particularly the Equal Earth projection.
The resolution is non-binding and does not ban Mercator, but invites governments, schools, institutions and technology operators to use maps that provide a more accurate perception of the planet’s size.
Why Africa and Greenland Look Similar
The issue becomes especially evident when you view the map through a traveler’s eyes. On the Mercator map, the farther a territory lies from the Equator, the more its area is stretched. That is how Greenland, Canada and Russia seem gigantic, while much of Africa and South America appears relatively smaller.
We’re not saying Mercator is a “totally wrong map.” On the contrary, for the purpose it was designed for it represented a real revolution: the lines that maintain a constant bearing can be drawn as straight, a crucial feature for navigation at sea. The problem arises when that same map is used to visually compare the sizes of countries and continents.
Just compare a few destinations and you’ll see how perception can change. Africa spans over 30 million square kilometers, whereas Greenland stops at just over 2 million: the African continent is therefore roughly fourteen times larger. Yet, in the representation many learned at school, the two areas look almost the same.
The same effect affects North America and Northern Europe. Canada appears even more imposing than it really is, and Russia seems to dominate the entire upper belt of the world map. Moving toward tropical zones, however, the proportions become much closer to the real ones.
Equal Earth, the UN’s New Map
The UN’s proposal focuses especially on the Equal Earth projection, developed in 2018 by cartographers Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny. The principle is almost the opposite of Mercator: instead of prioritizing the accuracy of angles and directions, Equal Earth is an equal-area projection, designed to keep the surface areas in correct proportion.
In other words, if a continent is truly double the size of another, it will also occupy double the area on the map. Naturally, Equal Earth also has to distort some aspects of reality, particularly shapes, angles and distances. It’s the inevitable compromise of any two-dimensional representation of the Earth: a spherical surface cannot be transformed into a rectangle without altering at least one characteristic.
For travelers, however, changing projection also means changing the way you look at the planet even before you depart, and for this reason the UN-approved resolution does not change Earth’s geography, but rather the lens through which we are used to viewing it.
