Overview
- The General Assembly approved the 'Correct the Map' resolution by 164 votes to 1 with six abstentions, a decision that was taken on Monday and carries no legal force.
- The text urges reduced use of the Mercator projection for general informational and educational maps and recommends area-preserving alternatives such as the Equal Earth projection.
- The United States was the sole country to vote against the measure, saying the issue represented an ideological agenda and criticizing the Assembly for debating cartographic matters.
- France said it will formally adopt the new map for official use and Togo announced plans to consult mapping and GPS companies and to update school textbooks to reflect the change.
- Mercator, created for navigation in 1569, enlarges regions near the poles and can make Greenland appear similar in size to Africa; Equal Earth, developed in 2018 by Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny, preserves relative area and is presented as the more accurate choice for general-purpose maps.