The United Nations General Assembly has taken a long-overdue step towards geographical honesty. On 4 September, 164 countries voted for a resolution calling for wider use of world maps that show continents and countries in their true relative sizes. Only the United States voted against it, while six countries abstained.

The resolution does not ban the existing Mercator projection or force every country to use one official map. It encourages governments, schools, international organisations, media outlets and technology companies to use equal-area maps, particularly the ‘Equal Earth’ projection, when comparing the size of different parts of the world.

This should not be controversial. A map used to teach world geography should represent the world as accurately as possible. Yet defenders of the existing map have treated even this simple principle as a political attack. Their reaction reveals how deeply people can become attached to a familiar distortion, especially when that distortion places their own countries at the visual centre of the world.

The Mercator projection was created by Gerardus Mercator in 1569 for maritime navigation. This Mercator map was important for navigation because it showed a ship’s constant compass direction as a straight line. Sailors could draw a straight line between two points, read the required bearing from their compass and follow that course across the sea.

In the UN-endorsed Equal Earth map, a constant compass direction may appear as a curved line, making it less convenient for traditional navigation. But a useful navigation chart is not necessarily a suitable map for classrooms, newsrooms or international organisations.

Mercator greatly enlarges places far from the Equator. As a result, Europe, North America,........

© National Herald