Why the World Map You Know Is Wrong, and What the UN Wants to Do About It

The familiar world map that hangs in classrooms and offices may be quietly misleading. The United Nations has now endorsed a shift to a different map projection — the Equal Earth projection — which aims to show the true size of countries and continents more accurately.

The problem lies in the challenge of flattening a round Earth onto a flat sheet. The Mercator projection, designed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569, was built for navigation. It allowed sailors to plot straight-line compass routes, but it did so by stretching landmasses near the poles.

The result is a world where Greenland appears nearly as large as Africa, when in reality Africa is about 14 times bigger. Similarly, Russia, Canada, and Europe look far larger than they are, while countries near the equator, including India, appear smaller than their actual size.

The Equal Earth projection, developed by cartographers in 2018, takes a different approach. It prioritises the accurate relative size of landmasses over navigational convenience. On this map, Africa looks much larger, North America and Europe shrink to more realistic proportions, and India appears slightly bigger. The African Union adopted the projection in February.

However, Equal Earth is not without its own trade-offs. It sacrifices the straight-line navigation features of Mercator and cannot perfectly measure true distances. As one cartography professor noted, no flat map can preserve area, shape, distance, and direction all at once.

Other alternatives exist, such as the Peters projection, which also corrects area but distorts shapes by squeezing polar regions and stretching equatorial zones.

The takeaway is that there is no single perfect world map. Every projection involves compromise. But the UN's endorsement signals a growing recognition that maps are more than tools for finding places — they shape how regions are perceived politically and economically.