UN adopts more accurate world map, moving away from Mercator projection
The UN General Assembly passed a resolution urging countries to replace the traditional Mercator map with the Equal Earth projection, which better reflects the true size of continents such as Africa. The resolution passed 164 votes in favor, with the US opposed.
The United Nations General Assembly on Friday adopted a resolution, driven by a group of African nations, calling on member states to switch to a new, more accurate world map projection. The measure passed with 164 countries in favor, the United States voting against, and six other nations abstaining.
The new projection, called Equal Earth, is presented as a more accurate way to depict the relative sizes of continents compared to the long-used Mercator map. The Mercator projection was created in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, originally designed for maritime navigation.
While the Mercator map accurately renders the shapes and angles of landmasses, it distorts their relative sizes, enlarging northern regions and shrinking areas near the equator. As a result, Europe and North America appear far larger on the map than they actually are, while Africa and South America appear smaller.
Togo's role and the new projection
Togo's foreign minister, Robert Dussey, who championed the resolution, said maps shape how people understand the world, influencing education and collective perception, and are therefore never neutral — a distorted map risks passing inaccurate impressions down through generations.
The Equal Earth projection was developed by a group of cartographers in 2018. It preserves the relative surface areas of continents and aims to represent their shapes as closely as possible to how they appear on a globe. Under this projection, Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Oceania all appear considerably larger than on the Mercator map.
France's support
France, a co-sponsor of the resolution, announced on Friday that it would stop using the Mercator projection. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the Mercator map gives the United States, Russia and China a disproportionately prominent visual presence compared with Africa, Latin America or Southeast Asia, and makes Greenland appear almost as large as Africa. He acknowledged that changing maps does not change the world itself, but said correcting a distorted representation is an act of truth. The move comes as France seeks to strengthen ties with African nations, including former colonies with which relations have at times been strained.
