Overview
- The UN General Assembly passed a non-binding 'Correct the Map' resolution that encourages wider use of equal-area projections, with 164 countries in favor, six abstaining and the United States the sole recorded no vote.
- The text does not ban the Mercator projection but recommends that institutions use the Equal Earth projection when showing relative land size because Equal Earth preserves true area relationships while keeping familiar shapes.
- United States officials framed their opposition as ideological, and the vote sharpened political attention after President Donald Trump posted a fictional map on Truth Social that placed other countries inside U.S. territory, prompting protests from Denmark and Iceland.
- Practical change will be voluntary and phased: navigation charts will retain Mercator where bearings matter, while schools, publishers, media and tech platforms would need curriculum revisions, new editions and software updates to adopt Equal Earth.
- The debate revives a long-running critique that Mercator, created for 16th-century navigation, exaggerates high-latitude lands — for example making Greenland appear similar to Africa despite Africa being about 14 times larger — and that map choice shapes public views of power and importance.