56 Correct the Map Facts - The UN's Equal Earth Vote

By Share a Fact Editorial Team · Published September 6, 2026

What the Resolution Says

On 4 September 2026 the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution titled Correct the map: rebalancing global cartographic representation and promoting equitable representation of the world's regions, particularly Africa.
Its document symbol is A/80/L.104.
The text calls for wider use of equal-area map projections and names the Equal Earth projection in particular.
It encourages governments, schools, international organisations and technology companies to use such maps wherever the relative size of regions matters.
It also asks that the limitations of common projections be taught alongside the maps themselves.
The resolution is not legally binding and does not ban the Mercator projection or require anyone to abandon it.
It does not touch the use of Mercator charts in maritime and aerial navigation, where straight compass courses remain useful.

The resolution passed with 164 votes in favour, 1 against and 6 abstentions.
The United States cast the only vote against.
Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, the Republic of Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine abstained.
Togo introduced the text on behalf of the Group of African States, and the Bahamas was among the sponsors.
Togo's foreign minister Robert Dussey told the Assembly that a fair map does not change the geography of the world, it changes how we see the world.
The United States delegate called the resolution a radical ideological project and argued it undermined the credibility of the United Nations.
Ukraine said the way the promoted reference map depicted its occupied territories was unacceptable, which is why it abstained.
Ireland, speaking for the European Union, supported the goal but wanted the scope limited to education, awareness-raising and geographical literacy.

Gerardus Mercator, a Flemish cartographer, presented his projection in 1569 on a wall map measuring about 202 by 124 centimetres.
The map was designed for sailors, because any course of constant compass bearing appears on it as a straight line.
To keep angles true, Mercator stretched the map more and more towards the poles, so its scale grows with the secant of the latitude.
At 60 degrees latitude the map's scale is double that at the equator, and at 85 degrees it is enlarged more than eleven times.
The poles themselves cannot be shown at all, because the stretching becomes infinite.
Regions near the equator, including most of Africa, look small beside enlarged northern lands such as Europe, Russia and North America.
Mercator has remained one of the most widely used world maps for more than 450 years.

Africa covers about 30.37 million square kilometres, roughly one-fifth of Earth's land area.
Greenland covers about 2.17 million square kilometres, yet on a Mercator map it looks as large as Africa.
Africa is therefore about 14 times larger than Greenland.
Alaska looks comparable to Brazil on a Mercator map, although Brazil is nearly five times bigger.
Madagascar and Great Britain appear similar in size, but Madagascar is more than twice as large.
The campaign points out that the United States, China, India, Japan, Mexico and much of Europe could fit inside Africa with land to spare.
Africa has 54 recognised states and a population of about 1.4 billion people, around 18 percent of the world total.

Equal Earth was created in 2018 by the cartographers Bojan Šavrič, Bernhard Jenny and Tom Patterson.
It is an equal-area pseudocylindrical projection, so every region's area appears in true proportion.
Its designers were inspired by the look of the Robinson projection, which is pleasing to the eye but does not preserve area.
Its parallels are straight lines and its meridians are evenly spaced along each parallel.
The projection was developed after Boston Public Schools adopted the Gall-Peters projection in March 2017, prompting a search for a more attractive equal-area map.
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies used Equal Earth for a global temperature-anomaly map in July 2018, one of the first adoptions.
Equal Earth is supported in mapping tools from Esri and Mapbox and in software built on OpenStreetMap.

The Gall-Peters projection was first described by the Scottish clergyman James Gall in 1855.
The German filmmaker Arno Peters promoted a near-identical map from 1973, presenting it as a corrective to Mercator's bias.
Critics noted that Gall-Peters stretches the tropics vertically and squashes the poles, so continent shapes are badly distorted.
In 1989 and 1990 seven North American geographic organisations resolved that rectangular world maps, Mercator and Gall-Peters included, should not be used for general purposes.
Boston became the first public school district in the United States to adopt Gall-Peters, in March 2017.
Nebraska passed legislation in April 2024 requiring its schools to use equal-area style world maps.
Equal Earth's makers designed it to keep the true areas of Gall-Peters while giving the continents more natural shapes.

Correct the Map is run by two advocacy groups, Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa.
It asks organisations to sign a charter committing to use the Equal Earth projection in their digital and printed world maps.
The African Union endorsed the campaign on 14 August 2025, the largest body to back it at that point.
Selma Malika Haddadi, deputy chairperson of the African Union Commission, said the Mercator map fostered a false impression that Africa was marginal.
The campaign frames the Mercator map as a colonial-era legacy that has shaped how Africa is perceived in media, education and policy.
Moky Makura, executive director of Africa No Filter, has been one of the campaign's most visible voices.
The campaign site offers a downloadable Equal Earth map in English and French.

France co-sponsored the UN resolution and has announced plans to move away from the Mercator projection.
Togo aims to update its school geography materials by the end of 2026.
Google Maps on desktop has shown Earth as a three-dimensional globe when zoomed out since August 2018, though it returns to Web Mercator at closer zooms.
Most online street maps, including Google Maps, Bing Maps and OpenStreetMap, still use the Web Mercator variant for zoomed-in views.
UNESCO has promoted maps based on the Gall-Peters projection, and such maps are widely used in British schools.
The same UN meeting also proclaimed an International Decade of Culture for Sustainable Development for 2027 to 2036 and an International Day for the Elimination of Child, Early and Forced Marriage.