The United Nations General Assembly voted to adopt the new world map, in which the relative area of Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Oceania is shown larger, while North America and Europe appear smaller than the Mercator map.
The resolution received the support of 164 countries. The US voted against, while 6 countries abstained.
The new map, called Equal Earth, was built to more accurately reflect the relative area of the lands on Earth. The resolution called on member states to use this map instead of the Mercator projection, which was developed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator from 1569, mainly for maritime purposes.
Mercator projection has the advantage of maintaining relatively accurate shapes and angles of land areas, but distorts relative areas when shifting the spherical Earth's surface to a flat map.
Areas at high latitudes are magnified, while areas near the equator are narrowed. Therefore, Europe and North America often look significantly larger than the actual area, while Africa and South America are narrowed.
The Equal Earth projection was released by a group of cartographers in 2018. This map retains the relative area between regions and tries to show the shape of continents close to the image on Earth.
Togo Foreign Minister Robert Dussey, the country sponsoring the resolution, said that the map has an impact on education, imagination and the general perception of society. According to him, a distorted image of the planet can cause inaccurate perceptions to be maintained through generations.
The US criticized the decision of the United Nations General Assembly, saying that the organization should focus on practical issues instead of debating map projects from centuries ago.
US representative, Ms. Yaryna Ferencevych, said that such moves are one of the reasons why the United Nations is losing credibility.
Meanwhile, France, one of the co-sponsors of the resolution, announced that it would abandon the Mercator projection. Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said that the new map helps reduce the disproportionate image prominence of the US, Russia and China compared to Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.
Mr. Barrot emphasized that changing the map cannot change the world, but correcting it in a distorted way is a step towards the truth.
