The vote was lopsided: 164 countries for, six abstaining, one against. The United Nations General Assembly has backed a resolution to replace the traditional Mercator world map with the Equal Earth projection, a map that makes Africa look bigger and shrinks North America and Europe.
The United States cast the lone no vote. Several African countries led the push, with Togo driving it.
What the resolution says
The text calls Equal Earth “a relevant option for improving the accuracy of the cartographic representation of the world” and urges member states to use it in place of Mercator. Gerardus Mercator, a Flemish cartographer, designed his projection for maritime navigation in 1569. It kept shapes and angles true, but sizes suffered. Northern regions were inflated and equatorial ones squeezed, so Europe and North America loom large while Africa and South America look small.
A group of cartographers launched Equal Earth in 2018. It enlarges Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Oceania, Australia included. “Equal Earth preserves the relative surface areas of continents and, as much as possible, shows their shapes as they appear on a globe,” cartographer Bojan Savric told AFP in 2025.
Togo’s foreign minister, Robert Dussey, argued that maps do more than show geography. “[Maps] guide education, nourish the imagination, and influence collective perceptions,” he said. “They are therefore never neutral.”
Washington objects
The US representative, Yaryna Ferencevych, spoke against the measure before the vote. Such moves, she said, are “the reason this institution is losing its credibility.” She complained that the assembly was “debating map projects from the 16th century and their role in promoting reparations and cognitive justice” instead of real problems.
France drops Mercator
France co-sponsored the resolution and announced on Friday that it would stop using Mercator. Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said that on the old map, “Greenland appears almost as big as Africa” and the United States, Russia and China take on outsized visual prominence. “Changing maps obviously doesn’t change the world,” he said. “But correcting a distorted representation is already an act of truth.”
The move comes as Paris tries to improve relations with Africa, particularly with former colonies where ties have been prickly.
