The UN General Assembly on September 4 backed the Correct the Map resolution: 164 states voted in favor of wider use of maps that preserve the true proportions of continental areas. The only country to vote against was the United States. Yet behind the headline decision lies a more complex story: the UN did not ban the familiar map, the traditional Mercator projection was never the sole official standard, and the debate over Africa's size almost immediately escalated into a dispute over Crimea, Kosovo, Kashmir and the islands Japan calls its "northern territories".
The resolution does not ban the Mercator map and does not declare Equal Earth the only permissible projection. It recommends that states, schools, international organizations, media and technology companies use the second version and other projections when it is important to compare the sizes of territories, and also explain the limitations of any flat map. Before the vote, the UN Secretariat had no single prescribed projection for all maps: the Organization's Geospatial Service states directly that different solutions were used for world maps, while for regional and national maps the projection was chosen for a specific territory and task. Even the map on the UN emblem is not Mercator.
The story begins in 1569, when Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator created his projection not as a schoolroom portrait of the planet but as a navigational tool: it preserved local angles, and a line of constant compass course became a straight line on the map. The price for this convenience is embedded in the geometry itself: a spherical surface cannot be unrolled onto a rectangular sheet without distortion, so the surface stretches ever more as it approaches the poles. This is why Greenland on the familiar map appears almost comparable to Africa, when in reality Africa is about 14 times larger. According to World Factbook reference data, Africa's area is about 30.1 million square kilometers, Russia's about 17.1 million, the US about 9.8 million, and India's about 3.3 million. That is, Africa is roughly comparable in area to Russia, the US and India combined, yet on Mercator this is not visible.
The long life of Mercator is not explained by colonial legacy alone: the rectangular grid was convenient for printing, atlases and navigation, and in the digital age it gained a new technical advantage — web maps break the world into square tiles that are easy to load and zoom by scale levels. Mercator has plenty of competitors: some projections preserve area, others angles, and still others try to distribute errors so that the whole map looks visually more natural. Long before the current resolution, the UN used Robinson, Winkel III and Eckert IV for world maps. Equal-area projections are also not an invention of 2026: Mollweide and other equal-area solutions have long been used in thematic cartography, while Gall-Peters became known as an attempt to make the sizes of Global South countries visually proportional, though its elongated shapes drew their own wave of criticism. Equal Earth appeared in 2018 as an attempt to combine two requirements: Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny created an equal-area pseudocylindrical projection that preserves area ratios but resembles the more familiar Robinson in overall silhouette.
At the 39th session of the African Union Assembly in February 2026, the continent's leaders backed the Correct the Map initiative promoted by Togo. In June, the African Union described it as part of a broader task of Africa's "global repositioning". Togo then brought the topic to the General Assembly on behalf of the African Group. Before the vote, Foreign Minister Robert Dussey thanked delegations for consultations and compromises. The UN Secretariat said Azerbaijan, Belarus, Brazil, France, Indonesia, Malaysia, the UAE and other states additionally joined the project as co-sponsors. France added symbolic momentum: on the day of the vote, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced that his ministry would abandon Mercator in diplomatic use in favor of projections better suited to the task and more accurately conveying areas.
The US delegation did not dispute that Mercator enlarges high latitudes. Its objection was directed at the political framing of the initiative: the country's representative criticized the fact that the cartographic topic was linked in the text and in supporters' speeches to reparations. For Washington, the issue looked not like a neutral recommendation to cartographers but like another element of the historical responsibility and decolonization agenda inside the UN. The US representative said the Organization should deal with the problems of peace, prosperity and international relations, rather than turning a debate about a 16th-century projection into an instrument of a broader ideological program. In its official explanation of vote, the US criticized the meaning and priority of the resolution rather than refuting the cartographic geometry.
After the vote, another problem emerged that is easy to miss. A projection answers only the question of how to transfer coordinates from a sphere to a plane. It does not decide where to draw a state border, what color to paint a disputed territory, or whose name to place on an island. The Equal Earth website itself acknowledges this sensitivity: its political map sources note that Russian-controlled Crimea is shown in neutral gray, Western Sahara is designated as territory occupied by Morocco, and in Kashmir the actual lines of control between China, India and Pakistan are drawn. For Ukraine, this layer was the reason to abstain: Kyiv said it did not object to the scientifically correct display of relative sizes but considered unacceptable the political maps associated with Equal Earth when they touch on Ukraine's internationally recognized borders. The European Union, followed by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, recorded a similar caveat: the resolution does not affect sovereignty, territorial integrity, state borders or the legal status of disputed territories.
Among the 164 states that voted for the resolution was Japan. However, a few days later — on September 10 — it demanded a change to the Equal Earth political map. The trigger was four islands northeast of Hokkaido: in one version of the map they were colored as Russian territory. These are Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan and the Habomai group. They are part of Russia as a result of World War II, but Japan disputes their ownership and calls them its "northern territories". On September 11, Tokyo said the display had been changed: in the Japanese version the islands received Japan's color, while in the English-language version they received a neutral design with an explanation of Russian administration and the Japanese claim.
The resolution does not oblige an urgent abandonment of Mercator: the General Assembly document is advisory in nature and separately preserves space for navigational tasks. Moreover, at street level Web Mercator remains technically convenient, and a huge infrastructure of digital tiles is built around it. The most noticeable changes can logically be expected where the whole world is shown in a single frame: in school atlases, textbooks, journalistic infographics, international presentations, and materials on climate, population and resources. Mercator remains strong where directions and local angles matter. Equal Earth is strong where areas matter. Cartographers have always known Mercator's price. What is new is the decision by a majority of states to move that price out of the geography textbook and into the political realm. Africa did not grow larger, Russia did not shrink, Greenland remained the same. Only the recommendation changed about what mathematical price society is willing to pay for the familiar look of the map. And paradoxically, almost immediately after the attempt to make the world map "fairer", the dispute shifted from the sizes of continents to borders — where geometry alone is no longer enough.
Source: podrobno.uz