New Delhi, Sept. 5 -- The way the world has been shown for centuries could soon change, after the UN backed an African-led push for maps that reflect the continents' true relative sizes.

Africa will appear much larger. Europe and North America will no longer dominate the page in quite the same way. Greenland, perhaps the biggest victim of cartographic illusion, will finally look closer to what it actually is: a vast island, but nowhere near the size of an actual continent.

The change follows a United Nations General Assembly resolution backing greater use of map projections that represent the relative sizes of countries and continents more accurately. The African-led initiative, championed by Togo and supported by the African Union, was...