The United Nations General Assembly voted on 4 September to encourage governments, schools, international organisations and technology companies to use world maps that show continents at their true relative size, singling out the Equal Earth projection published in 2018. The resolution, known as “Correct the Map”, was tabled by Togo on behalf of the African Group and builds on a campaign backed by the African Union. It passed 164 to 1, with six abstentions — Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine. The United States cast the single vote against, its delegation describing resolutions of this kind as advancing an ideological agenda.
The cartography underneath the vote is not in dispute. Gerardus Mercator’s 1569 projection preserves angles, which is precisely why it has been indispensable at sea and in the air: a straight line drawn on it is a constant compass bearing. What it cannot also preserve is area, and the further a landmass sits from the equator the larger it is drawn. Equal-area projections such as Equal Earth make the opposite trade, keeping relative size honest and letting shape distort instead. No flat map can do both. The argument has always been about which compromise belongs on a classroom wall.
The resolution is non-binding. It requires nothing of any member state and sets no timetable, and Togo’s foreign ministry has said it in no way challenges the use of the Mercator projection for maritime and aerial navigation, where the property it preserves is the useful one. What it changes, if anything changes, is the default — what a ministry of education orders, what a mapping service serves first.
“A fair map does not change the geography of the world, it changes how we see the world,” Togo’s foreign minister, Robert Dussey, told the Assembly.
A vote of 164 to 1 is rare enough at the General Assembly to be worth noting on its own, whatever becomes of the maps.