Overview
- The UN General Assembly voted on Sept. 4, 2026 to adopt the 'Corregir el mapa' resolution by 164 votes in favor, six abstentions and one against, recommending area-equivalent map projections such as Equal Earth.
- The text is not legally binding and asks member states, international organizations, UNESCO and mapping technology platforms to use equal-area projections when relative size matters, leaving adoption voluntary and gradual.
- The vote exposed a geopolitical split: the United States cast the lone no vote calling the measure ideological while France said it will abandon Mercator for official use and Togo pledged to update school geography materials by the end of the year.
- The resolution targets a specific technical problem: the Mercator projection, designed for navigation, preserves angles but inflates high-latitude landmasses, whereas Equal Earth preserves relative surface area so Africa appears far larger than Greenland.
- Practical effects will roll out slowly through curriculum changes, official publications and digital maps and will depend on coordination among states, tech firms and agencies; the resolution also frames the change as correcting a centuries-old cartographic bias rooted in historical mapmaking.