UN General Assembly Adopts Equal Earth Projection Resolution to Fix Centuries of Cartographic Distortion

The map of Africa is much larger than most people realize, yet most classroom maps and atlases continue to understate its true scale due to a distortion embedded in the Mercator projection that has influenced world maps for over four centuries.

This distortion is far from subtle. Designed in the 16th century for European colonial exploration and maritime trade, the Mercator projection makes Greenland appear roughly the size of Africa, even though Africa is actually about 14 times larger. Because the exaggeration increases with distance from the equator, it heavily inflates Europe, including Russia, and North America, while shrinking Africa, Latin America, and South Asia.

To correct this imbalance, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted 164 to 1 on Friday to adopt a nonbinding resolution promoting the Equal Earth projection as an alternative to Mercator, showcasing continents in their accurate proportions. Led by Togo on behalf of the African Group and supported by the African Union, the initiative encourages schools, institutions, and tech companies to adopt the change to rectify the minimization of equatorial regions. The African Group represents the largest regional voting and dialogue bloc at the UN, comprising 54 African Union member states.

In the vote, the United States stood as the only nation to oppose the resolution, dismissing the measure as a “radical ideological project.” Meanwhile, Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, and Ukraine chose to abstain.

US representative Yaryna Ferencevych argued before the vote that the resolution undermines the institution's credibility, stating that the body was debating 16th-century map projects instead of addressing genuine problems. Friday’s resolution remains nonbinding and simply encourages the adoption of default maps that display true proportions without banning the Mercator projection or imposing a strict replacement.

Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey emphasized to the UNGA that maps influence education, imagination, and collective perception, asserting that the resolution validates African reality. Having adopted the Equal Earth projection in March, the African Union and Togo plan to host a meeting in Lome early next year alongside UNESCO and technology companies like Google to discuss practical implementation.

Because the Earth is a sphere, flattening it inherently causes distortion in shape, area, distance, or direction. Gerardus Mercator published his world map in 1569, prioritizing angles and straight bearings for 16th-century navigation. In contrast, the Equal Earth projection prioritizes true area for fair continent comparison at the expense of slight outline bending.