UN Votes to Replace World Map That Shrinks Africa

THE VOTE

The UN General Assembly voted 164 to 1 on Friday to back a resolution encouraging countries to replace the Mercator projection, the default world map since 1569, with the Equal Earth projection. The United States cast the only vote against the measure, while Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova and Ukraine abstained. The push was led by Togo, whose foreign minister Robert Dussey said maps guide education, nourish the imagination and influence collective perceptions.

WHY IT MATTERS

The Mercator projection was designed for maritime navigation and distorts the relative size of continents, inflating regions near the poles while shrinking those near the equator. Africa, at roughly 30.3 million square kilometers, is large enough to hold the United States, China, India and most of Europe combined, yet appears about the same size as Greenland on a Mercator map, a landmass roughly 14 times smaller. Latin America, at about 20 million square kilometers, Oceania at 8.5 million and South Asia at 5.1 million are similarly undersized on the traditional map. Together, the four regions cover more than 40 percent of the world's land surface.

THE ABSTENTIONS EXPLAINED

Of the six countries that abstained rather than voting for or against, Ukraine gave the most specific reasoning: it said it supported correcting historical distortions affecting Africa and the Global South, but objected to how some maps using the Equal Earth projection depict Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova and Serbia abstained without detailing their reasoning as specifically.

THE REACTION

France said it would abandon the Mercator projection following the vote, with Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot saying the old map gives the United States, Russia and China disproportionate visual prominence while making Greenland appear almost as big as Africa. The African Union welcomed the result, saying the resolution "promotes equal-area maps like Equal Earth across classrooms, media, and international institutions, ensuring the world map finally reflects Africa's true scale, weight, and place in the world." The US delegate, Yaryna Ferencevych, dismissed the resolution before the vote, saying a debate over map projections from the 16th century was hurting the UN's credibility.

WHAT'S NEXT

The resolution is non-binding. The UN said it is not banning the Mercator projection, only encouraging governments and institutions to adopt Equal Earth, a projection created in 2018 by cartographers Bojan Savric, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny.