The United Nations General Assembly has backed a new world map designed to provide a more accurate representation of the relative sizes of continents, with the move drawing criticism from the United States.
The resolution, adopted on Friday with support from 164 countries, calls on UN member states to use the Equal Earth projection instead of the traditional Mercator map. The United States voted against it, while six countries abstained.
The Equal Earth projection is intended to better reflect the actual surface areas of the world’s continents. Under the widely used Mercator projection, developed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569, regions in the northern hemisphere appear significantly larger than they are in reality.
The Mercator map was originally designed for maritime navigation, prioritising the accurate representation of shapes and angles rather than the relative size of landmasses.
As a result, Europe and North America appear larger, while Africa and South America are visually reduced. The Equal Earth projection, introduced by a group of cartographers in 2018, gives greater visual prominence to Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Oceania.
Togo, which sponsored the resolution, said maps played an important role in shaping how people understood the world.
Foreign Minister Robert Dussey said maps “guide education, nourish the imagination, and influence collective perceptions”, arguing that distorted representations could reinforce inaccurate perceptions across generations.
Washington, however, dismissed the initiative as a misplaced priority.
US representative Yaryna Ferencevych criticised the General Assembly before the vote, saying debates over centuries-old map projections were contributing to the institution’s loss of credibility.
France, which co-sponsored the resolution, also announced that it would stop using the Mercator projection.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the map gave disproportionate visual prominence to countries such as the United States, Russia and China, while making Greenland appear almost as large as Africa.
“Changing maps obviously doesn’t change the world,” Barrot said. “But correcting a distorted representation is already an act of truth.”
The initiative comes as France seeks to strengthen ties with African countries, including former colonies where relations with Paris have become increasingly strained.
