The United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly in favour of a resolution calling for more accurate and equitable representations of the world's landmasses, drawing renewed attention to how maps can influence perceptions of the size and importance of different regions.
The resolution, adopted on September 4, received 164 votes in favour. The United States was the only country to vote against it, while six countries abstained. The initiative was put forward by African Union member states and the Bahamas.
Despite descriptions of the decision as the adoption of a "new world map", the resolution does not legally replace the Mercator projection or require every country, school or mapping service to abandon it. Instead, it encourages greater use of equal-area map projections, which preserve the relative area of landmasses more accurately.
One of the projections highlighted in coverage of the resolution is the Equal Earth projection, developed to represent continental areas more accurately while maintaining a visually familiar global layout.
The debate stems largely from limitations of the Mercator projection, which was developed in the 16th century primarily for navigation. While Mercator is useful for preserving directions and angles, it significantly exaggerates the apparent size of regions closer to the North and South Poles.
As a result, Greenland can appear comparable in size to Africa on a conventional Mercator map, despite Africa being vastly larger in reality. Equal-area projections address this particular problem by preserving the relative size of landmasses.
The issue has particular significance for Africa. On commonly used Mercator maps, the continent appears considerably smaller than its actual area when compared with regions at higher latitudes.
Supporters of the UN initiative argue that repeatedly seeing distorted maps can influence how people understand the world's geography and the relative significance of different regions.
Geospatial technologist Alex Leith, speaking to The World, argued that more accurate representations could improve geographical education and help people develop a better understanding of the actual size and scale of the world's landmasses.
The debate is not simply about appearance. Cartographers have long faced a fundamental problem: the Earth is three-dimensional, while most maps are displayed on flat surfaces. No flat map can preserve every property of the globe perfectly. Different projections therefore make different compromises between area, shape, distance and direction.
The Mercator projection remains particularly useful for navigation because of its ability to preserve angles and directions. Its limitations become more significant, however, when it is used to compare the relative sizes of continents and countries.
The UN resolution therefore does not make Mercator obsolete. Instead, it promotes consideration of alternative projections when the primary purpose of a map is to communicate the relative size of geographical regions.
The vote has also generated political debate. Supporters describe the initiative as a step toward correcting longstanding geographical misconceptions, particularly regarding Africa and other regions of the Global South. Critics, meanwhile, argue that changing a map projection has limited practical consequences and should not be confused with a change to the world's actual geography.
The resolution is also non-binding, meaning it does not force governments, private companies or educational institutions to adopt a particular projection.
Its significance may therefore lie less in an immediate change to the maps people use and more in encouraging educators, cartographers and technology companies to consider how geographical information is presented.
For future generations, advocates hope that using maps that more accurately communicate continental areas will provide a clearer understanding of the world's geography.
The UN vote does not change the size or position of any continent. What it seeks to change is how those continents are represented — and, potentially, how people understand the world when they look at a map.
