[OPINION] Slanted Cartography: The Politics of Mapping

There is much like a map. The very drawing of a line signifies an assertion, an acceptance, or even a repudiation of power.  Borders are delineated for reasons of interest and understanding.  I chart, therefore, it is.  Areas of territorial dispute are reconciled by the cartographer’s handy reconciliations for the given moment.  One day, the Polish Corridor exists like some sinister geopolitical ploy.  Next, it vanishes into historical mist.  Countries born one day, gone the next, only to be reborn through a set of new borders.  Partitions decided upon and inflicted.  (No empire did this better than the British.)

On September 4, the UN General Assembly decided by a vast margin that a more representative map of continental landmasses should be endorsed in the form of the Equal Earth cartographic projection.  Launched in 2018 by the cartographers Bojan Savric of the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Tom Patterson of the US National Park Service, and Bernhard Jenny of Monash University, the map, according to Savric, “preserves the relative surface areas of continents and, as much as possible, shows their shapes as they appear on the globe.”

The resolution (document A/80/L.104), titled “Correct the map: rebalancing cartographic representation and promoting equitable representation of the world’s regions, particularly Africa”, expressed the conviction “that correcting cartographic distortions of continental sizes constitutes an act of cognitive justice and memorial reparation, understood as promoting accurate geographical knowledge, as well as historical truth, education and awareness raising, and promotes mutual understanding among peoples”.

The Equal Earth projection is intended to replace the map drawn by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569.  Revolutionary as that map was, enabling European sailors to plot their conquering courses with greater ease, it distorts land masses at higher latitudes.  (One need only see the sheer enormity of Greenland relative to, say, South America and Africa.)  As the resolution recognised, “the Mercator projection, widely used around the world, particularly distorts, from the perspective of area representation, continental masses located far from the equator, resulting in a proportional shrinking of Africa and other regions”.

The thrust for a new adoption has come from African states, with Togo taking the lead.  According to its foreign minister, Robert Dussey, the new projection would, in the meaningless jargon of political aspiration, “guide education, nourish the imagination, and influence collective perceptions”.  (To be fair to Dussey, he did make the salient observation that, “A fair map does not change the geography of the world” so much as changing “how we see the world.)  In terms of votes, 164 voted in favour of the resolution, with the United States being the sole objector.  Six abstentions (Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Republic of Moldova, Serbia, Ukraine) were also recorded.

Largely because it would do little in terms of actual change, various countries, notably ones of such colonial pedigree as France, endorsed it.  Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot explained that the Mercator projection gave “a disproportionate visual prominence” to the US, Russia and China relative to Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.  Greenland, he sniffed, “appears almost as big as Africa.”  Barrot also conceded that merely changing maps did not necessarily “change the world”.  This was merely a case of “correcting a distorted representation” as “an act of truth.”

The United States thought little of it, voting against the resolution for the very same reason that it was somewhat vacuous.  “Instead of focusing on genuine problems,” wondered US representative Yaryna Ferencevych, “this body is debating map projects from the 16^th century, and their role in promoting reparations and ‘cognitive justice’.”  But as maps are not just maps, Ferencevych went further, suggesting that this challenge to the Mercator projection was part of “the much larger and more radical ideological project it belongs to.”  Not so vacuous after all.

Ukraine, in justifying its abstention, expressed support for correcting distortions affecting the African continent and other parts of the Global South but found fault with the Equal Earth projection’s depiction of Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia.  Crimea, for instance, is to be found in a lighter shade than the rest of Ukraine.  In the words of the mission, “Such a misrepresentation could open a Pandora’s box, effectively facilitating abuses and distortions of the political map of the world.”  This very act was nothing less than a violation of the UN Charter and international law.   “In 2026,” grumbled Ukrainian lawmaker Kira Rudik, “the UN should not need a reminder: Crimea is Ukraine. Shame.”

Fellow abstainer Moldova expressed similar sentiments, with its Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Chisinau acknowledging “the concerns expressed by Ukraine regarding the possible political instrumentalisation of some cartographic representations, including in relation to the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories.”

The remarks made at the General Assembly recapitulate the theme that cartography is geography made political.  Mark Monmonier has spent time on the nature of how maps are used to advance the cause of States while frustrating, limiting and denuding those of others.  In his 1991 text How to Lie with Maps, he suggests that cartographers can misrepresent and distort their work, be it through the use of “white lies” in attempting to portray a reality or the more sinister use of “nefarious lies”, suggesting deliberate falsification and resort to propaganda.  In some notable cases, the map itself can be completely mendacious, as in the Vinland Map, acquired by Yale University in 1965 and said to depict a pre-Columbian “Vinlanda Insula,” showing how Norsemen were the first Europeans to reach the New World.  In 2021, conservators and conservation scientists at the university were unequivocal in their reassessment.  “The Vinland Map is a fake,” determined Raymond Clemens, curator of early books and manuscripts at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscripts Library.

J.B. Harley is another to torpedo notions of neutrality regarding the map.  The cartographer, he wrote in his work “Deconstructing the Map”, can never be seen as a neutral agent.  While he shows himself all too susceptible to the shamanistic propensities of postmodern babble (Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida loom like iconostases), he makes some obvious points.  Maps will be produced, depending on the producer’s own inclinations, emphasising the somewhat friendlier shape of a country’s relations with its counterparts, or more hostile inclinations, depending on circumstances.  Maps are products of “cultural production” governed by various rules and values.  “In the map itself, social structures are often disguised beneath an abstract, instrumental space, incarcerated in the coordinates of computer mapping.”  The technical aspect is bound to the social.

Like most resolutions emanating from the General Assembly, the Correct the Map effort is non-binding and bound to be treated as such.  The French Foreign Ministry has openly declared it will drop the Mercator projection in favour of the Eckert IV projection (vintage 1906), though it had already started making less use of it from 2021. Mercator’s work will likely continue flourishing in internet-based mapping applications and geo-referencing technologies, even if that 16th-century projection fails to meet the needs of “cognitive justice”.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com