OK, we admit it…..we’re not big fans of the U.N. However, they do occasionally produce something that we can agree with.
On September 4, 2026, the United Nations voted to adopt a new world map. The Equal Earth projection shows continents’ and countries’ true relative sizes. It’s a far cry from the old map, the Mercator projection , which was created in the 16th century for maritime navigation. In contrast, the Mercator projection, developed in 1569 for navigation, preserves angles and shapes locally but dramatically enlarges regions near the poles
The old map is still used by many map programs; however, it distorts the size of land masses as you move away from the equator.
The Equal Earth projection is an equal-area map, meaning it maintains the proportional size of geographic regions.
The old map made Greenland look roughly the same size as Africa, when in reality Africa is 14 times larger. It made the State of Alaska look almost as large as Brazil, even though Brazil is almost five times the size of Alaska.
When planning your travels, maps are useful even if you are not doing the navigating….it’s still nice to see things in perspective.