You’ve probably looked at the Mercator projection your entire life without realizing it's been lying to you. On standard classroom maps and digital screens, Greenland looks roughly the same size as the entire continent of Africa. In reality, Africa is about 14 times larger than Greenland.
That massive cartographic distortion isn't an accident of nature. It's a 16th-century navigational tool that overstayed its welcome by about four hundred years. For another view, check out: this related article.
The United Nations General Assembly recently voted 164 to one to back an Africa-led resolution urging governments, schools, and tech platforms to transition away from the Mercator map in favor of equal-area projections like Equal Earth. Spearheaded by Togo on behalf of the African Union, the "Correct the Map" initiative aims to fix how global geography is taught and perceived.
The Math Problem Behind the Mercator Map
To understand why this change matters, you have to look at what Gerardus Mercator was trying to accomplish back in 1569. Further reporting regarding this has been provided by NBC News.
The Flemish cartographer didn't set out to distort global politics. He built a cylindrical map projection specifically to help sailors plot straight-line compass courses across oceans. When you peel a sphere and flatten it onto a 2D rectangle, something has to give. Mercator chose to preserve angles and directions, but he did so at a severe cost to relative land area.
As landmasses move further away from the equator and toward the poles, the Mercator projection stretches them out horizontally and vertically.
That means countries in the Global North—like Canada, Russia, and European nations—appear much larger than they actually are. Meanwhile, equatorial regions like Africa, South America, and India are visually compressed. Greenland occupies an absurd amount of visual real estate on standard classroom walls, completely eclipsing its actual footprint compared to the African landmass.
Why Visual Scale Shapes Global Perception
Critics of the Mercator map argue that centuries of viewing a distorted globe create a subtle psychological bias. When an entire continent home to over a billion people looks smaller than a sparsely populated northern island, it shapes how people subconsciously value human geography, economic potential, and political weight.
Togo's Foreign Minister Robert Dussey framed the UN resolution around the concept of cognitive justice. The push isn't about rewriting science or pretending physical geography is different than it is. It's about recognizing that maps are cultural artifacts as much as mathematical ones.
Even though the resolution is non-binding, it carries heavy symbolic and practical weight. Togo announced plans to update its own national school textbooks to use equal-area projections. Unexpected allies emerged too, with France announcing plans to move away from Mercator in its official mapping materials.
The Pushback and Practical Realities
Not everyone hopped on board immediately. The United States cast the sole opposing vote, dismissing the resolution as part of an ideological agenda and arguing that the UN should focus strictly on immediate geopolitical conflicts rather than cartographic proportions.
Cartographers themselves point out a fundamental truth: you cannot flatten a 3D globe onto a 2D piece of paper without introducing some form of distortion. Every flat map compromises something.
The Equal Earth projection, developed in 2018 by cartographers Bojan Savric, Tom Patterson, and Bernhard Jenny, sacrifices some directional perfection to preserve accurate relative land sizes while keeping continental shapes looking natural.
Crucially, nobody is trying to ban Mercator outright. Pilots and sea captains will still use it because straight lines remain essential for navigation. But using a navigational aid meant for 16th-century wooden ships to teach global geography in modern classrooms is no longer defensible.
If you design digital apps, write educational content, or build mapping tools, take a hard look at your default projections. Transitioning toward equal-area maps is a straightforward step toward fixing a legacy of visual distortion that has warped our view of the planet for centuries.
