France Drops Mercator for 1906 Eckert IV Map as UN Backs Equal-Area Shift
Updated
Updated · Euronews · Sep 5
France Drops Mercator for 1906 Eckert IV Map as UN Backs Equal-Area Shift
3 articles · Updated · Euronews · Sep 5
Summary
Jean-Noël Barrot said France’s foreign ministry will replace Mercator with the Eckert IV projection on diplomatic maps to better reflect real continental sizes, especially Africa’s.
Mercator enlarges polar regions and shrinks equatorial areas, Barrot said, giving outsized visual weight to countries such as the United States, Russia and China while downplaying Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.
2021 marked the start of the ministry’s phaseout, which has already spread across public diplomacy websites; officials said Mercator will still be kept for limited uses such as navigation charts and some regional mapping.
164 UN member states backed a General Assembly resolution hours later urging Equal Earth or other equal-area projections, while the United States voted against and six countries abstained.
France’s move aligns with a broader push to recast world maps, though Mercator remains common on Google Maps and in most French school classrooms.