United Nations votes to adopt new world map which will shrink the US and supersize Africa

United Nations votes to adopt new world map which will shrink the US and supersize Africa For over 450 years we have been misled about what the world actually looks like. . . . until now. And one notable nation is less than impressed. The world as we know it is about to change. The United Nations has voted to retire the world map. Yep, the commonly used world map used in classrooms, government buildings, and on globes worldwide. Instead, a new map will be endorsed which will see the United States shrink and Africa increase in size. So why has the UN chosen to ditch our centuries-old, beloved world map? It all comes down to design, with a 2018 design called the Equal Earth projection now found to be a more accurate representation of what our world actually looks like. It corrects scale and layout issues that have distorted our world view for more than 450 years thanks to geographical and geometrical warping caused by Mercator, the original world map designer. Mercator's map artificially stretches land masses as they get further away from the equator. Basically, it has been distorting some nations and shrinking others for centuries. Take the United States and Greenland as an example. On a Mercator map, the two nations look to be the same size. But, in reality, Greenland is about 14 times larger in landmass compared to America. It is impossible to accurately represent the surface of a globe on a two-dimensional chart, so whenever a map of the world gets drawn up, sacrifices have to be made. Mercator aimed to preserve direction in order to help explorers fan out in ships to explore the world. So, at the expense of area, land masses must become enlarged the further they are from the equator to account for the Earth's curvature. As the new design corrects these spatial exaggerations, the US will be shrunken down on new maps going forward, while continents like Africa and Australia will look vastly larger. At the UN General Assembly, a resolution was put forward by a coalition of African nations calling for our world maps to stop minimising their continent. It proposed the UN endorse the updated map designs, with a total of 164 countries voting in agreement on Friday (September 4). The resolution was passed, and the UN will now recommend the new world map design to ensure maps "more accurately reflect the true size" of our world. Six countries – Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia, and Ukraine – abstained from voting at the UN General Assembly, while one lone dissenting voice opposed the new map design: the United States of America. With the US set to shrink under new map designs, it would seem that perhaps size does matter. But if that were the motivation behind America's 'no' vote, they weren't letting it on. Instead, Washington's representative accused the UN-approved map resolution of being about much more than just correcting map proportions. “This resolution mocks the work and purpose of this institution,” US representative to the UN Yaryna Ferencevych, dubbing the "Correct the Map" vote as part of a wider “radical ideological project“ that undermines "common sense" global policies. In a statement explaining its reason to vote no, the US slammed the UN for "debating map projects from the 16th century" instead of real-world issues like "international peace, prosperity, or good relations". Diplomats from Togo led the campaign to get the new map vote before the broader UN General Assembly. The nation's foreign minister, Robert Dussey, pointed out that maps are far more symbolic than people give them credit for. “A fair map does not change the geography of the world; it changes how we see the world,” he said. France, another nation set to shrink on the new proposed map designs, issued a statement of its own prior to the UN vote. French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot confirmed Paris will nix the Mercator chart in favour of the Equal Earth projection. As for Mercator, his maps won't just vanish from circulation, as the UN resolution is non-binding. Governments can choose to use either design, but the power of choice creates a new cartographic culture more focused on fairness and equality for all.