The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to endorse the Equal Earth map projection over the centuries-old Mercator map, and the United States was the only nation on the planet to vote no.
The vote, which took place Friday, pitted 164 member states in favor against a single dissent from Washington, while six countries, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia, and Ukraine, abstained. The resolution, led by Togo and the African Union’s “Correct the Map” campaign, encourages governments, schools, and technology companies to adopt map projections that display Africa and other equatorial regions at their true relative sizes rather than the shrunken versions produced by the Mercator projection, which has dominated classrooms and atlases since the 16th century.
The resolution does not ban the Mercator map. But it establishes the U.N.’s official preference for equal-area alternatives, and the Trump administration made clear it wanted no part of it.