The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly endorsed a proposal encouraging governments, schools, and other institutions to use a world map that portrays the continents in their correct relative sizes. The non-binding resolution, promoted by Togo and supported by the African Union, received 164 votes in favor, six abstentions and only one vote against, from the United States.

It recommends greater use of the Equal Earth projection instead of the familiar Mercator projection that has dominated world maps for centuries. The Equal Earth map changes how land areas are represented on a flat map.

The distortions on the Mercator Projection have long been known. A three-dimensional Earth cannot be flattened onto a two-dimensional surface without distorting area, shape, distance, or direction. Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator developed his projection in 1569 primarily to assist navigation.

Its great advantage was that lines following a constant compass bearing could appear as straight lines, making the map extremely useful to sailors. The price was enormous distortion of area toward the poles. Greenland, Canada, Russia and northern Europe consequently appear much larger relative to equatorial regions than they really are.

The Mercator map did not simply shrink Africa. Because much of Africa lies relatively close to the Equator, its scale is less distorted than that of high-latitude regions. Africa appears artificially small primarily because northern countries are dramatically enlarged around it.

Over time, that mathematical distortion came to acquire political significance. Mercator was not designing colonial propaganda, rather, his projection solved a practical navigation problem. But its widespread adoption occurred during centuries in which European states built global empires. Maps increasingly centered European geography, trade routes and political interests, and Europeans used cartography to survey territory, draw borders, and administer colonial possessions.

By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Mercator maps were being used far beyond navigation. They were also used in classrooms, atlases, and political publications where their distortions could make Europe and North America appear disproportionately large and dominant. Historian of cartography Mark Monmonier has noted that Mercator’s projection was eventually used in contexts for which it was poorly suited, including geopolitical maps.

There is no geographical reason north must be at the top of a map. For example, medieval Islamic, European, and Asian maps used several different orientations. North-up maps became increasingly standardized alongside European navigation and global commerce. Similarly, the world’s zero-degree longitude passes through Greenwich, England, largely because British navigation and charts dominated international shipping when governments selected a common prime meridian at the 1884 International Meridian Conference. At the time, roughly 72 percent of world shipping tonnage was already using Greenwich.

Equal Earth, created in 2018 by cartographers Bojan Šavrič, Bernhard Jenny, and Tom Patterson, deliberately preserves the relative areas of countries and continents, although, like every flat projection of a three-dimensional object, it still includes distortions. The Trump Administration, the sole no vote, described the new map as a radical project, but in reality, it’s simply a more accurate representation of world geography.

Supporters argue that maps influence how generations imagine importance, power, and place. Togo’s foreign minister, Robert Dussey, summarized the argument by observing that maps help shape education and collective perceptions. The 2026 UN vote is an effort not to rewrite geography, but to reconsider a visual convention inherited from the age of European maritime expansion, and to show Africa, and the rest of the world, in proportions much closer to physical reality.