On Friday, the United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution to replace the 16th-century Mercator map projection\u2014a cartographic standard devised by Flemish mapmaker Gerardus Mercator\u2014with a more accurate representation that reflects the actual proportions of continents. The shift addresses long-standing criticism that the Mercator projection disproportionately inflates the sizes of regions in higher latitudes while shrinking those near the equator, most notably understating Africa’s true landmass.<\/p>\n
The resolution was spearheaded by a coalition of African countries and co-sponsored by France, and it received broad international support: 164 member states voted in favor, while the United States opposed the measure and six other countries abstained.<\/p>\n
Cartographers and educators have long argued that the Mercator projection, originally designed for maritime navigation, distorts public understanding of global geography by making Greenland appear larger than Africa, despite Africa being roughly 14 times bigger in reality. The new projection aims to correct this imbalance and provide a more equitable visual representation of the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The UN General Assembly voted 164-1 to adopt a map replacing the centuries-old Mercator projection, which systematically understates Africa’s true size, following a resolution championed by African nations and France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[227,1386,708,62,247,10],"class_list":["post-594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","tag-africa","tag-cartography","tag-diplomacy","tag-europe","tag-united-nations","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}