Equal Earth Map: Correcting World Map Distortions & Decolonising Cartography

Subject: GS 1: Geography

Context: Recently, the United Nations General Assembly passed the “Correct the Map” resolution, endorsing the Equal Earth projection as a more proportionate representation of the world’s geographical surface.

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• The resolution was adopted with 164 (including India) votes in favour, 1 against and 6 abstentions.
• Although non-binding, the resolution highlights growing concerns over the geographical and perceptual distortions created by conventional world maps, particularly the Mercator projection.

About Equal Earth Map

• Meaning and Origin: Equal Earth is an equal-area, pseudocylindrical world map projection developed in 2018 by cartographers Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny.
  • It was designed to represent the entire globe while preserving the correct relative size of landmasses.
• Core Principle: It ensures that countries and continents are shown in proportion to their actual surface areas.
  • Unlike some earlier equal-area projections, it attempts to retain recognisable and visually balanced continental shapes.
• Key Features:
  • Equal-area: Preserves relative landmass size.
  • Recognisable Shapes: Reduces extreme shape distortion compared with projections such as Gall-Peters.
  • Straight Parallels: Lines of latitude remain straight and horizontal.
  • Flexible Centering: Can be centred on different meridians, enabling Pacific- or Oceania-centred maps as well.

About Current Map Style- The Mercator Projection

• Origin and Purpose: Developed by Gerardus Mercator and published in 1569.
  • It is a cylindrical conformal projection, originally designed for maritime navigation.
• Major Strength- Navigation: Rhumb lines, representing constant compass bearings, appear as straight lines, making navigation easier.
  • Preserves local angles and directions.
• Major Limitation: To preserve angles on a flat rectangular grid, latitudes are increasingly stretched towards the poles.
  • Consequently, high-latitude regions appear disproportionately large, while equatorial regions appear relatively smaller.
  • For example, Greenland can appear comparable in size to Africa, despite Africa being roughly 14 times larger.

Why Need for Equal Earth Map

• Correcting Scale Distortion: Mercator’s area distortion can give a misleading impression of the relative geographical size of continents and countries.
  • Equal Earth provides a more proportionate representation of the actual extent of Africa, Latin America and South Asia.
• Reducing Visual and Cognitive Bias: The widespread use of Mercator maps in classrooms, textbooks and media can influence people’s perception of the relative importance of different regions.
  • The disproportionately enlarged appearance of northern and high-latitude regions may contribute to a Eurocentric visual representation of the world.
• Addressing Limitations of Earlier Equal-Area Maps: Gall-Peters corrected area distortion but introduced considerable shape distortion.
  • Equal Earth attempts to combine area accuracy with more recognisable continental outlines.
• Decolonising Cartographic Representation: The debate is increasingly linked with decolonisation of knowledge, as cartographic choices can influence how global geography, power and the Global South are perceived.

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