UN votes to adopt new world map

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By 164 votes to one, Member States of UN on Friday endorsed a resolution promoting map projections that more accurately reflect the true size of continents.

The United States cast the sole vote against, dismissing the initiative as part of a “radical ideological project.” 

Six countries – Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine – abstained.

The resolution does not ban the Mercator projection or impose a replacement. Instead, it encourages governments, schools, international organizations and technology companies to use the Equal Earth projection.

The Mercator projection (/mərˈkeɪtər/) is a conformal cylindrical map projection first presented by Flemish geographer and mapmaker Gerardus Mercator in 1569. In the 18th century, it became the standard map projection for navigation due to its property of representing rhumb lines as straight lines. When applied to world maps, the Mercator projection inflates the size of lands the farther they are from the equator. Therefore, landmasses such as Greenland and Antarctica appear far larger than they actually are relative to landmasses near the equator. Its use for maps other than marine charts declined throughout the 20th century, but resurged in the 21st century due to characteristics favorable for online mapping.

The Equal Earth map projection is an equal-area pseudocylindrical global map projection invented by Bojan Šavrič, Bernhard Jenny, and Tom Patterson in 2018. It is inspired by the widely used Robinson projection, but unlike the Robinson projection, it retains the relative size of areas. The projection equations are simple to implement and fast to evaluate. The United Nations General Assembly voted on a resolution to encourage the use of the equal-area projections in September 2026. The resolution specifically noted the Equal Earth projection, which is expected to affect educational and technological applications.

  1. UN News
  2. Mercator projection
  3. Equal Earth map projection


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