On 4 September the UNGA passed Togo’s “Correct the Map” resolution (A/80/L.104) 164–1, with the U.S. alone against and six European abstentions. It endorses the 2018 Equal Earth projection (Savrič, Patterson, Jenny) so continents keep relative area—Africa no longer dwarfed by a Mercator Greenland—and calls that “cognitive justice” and memorial reparation. France backed it as “an act of truth” while admitting maps do not change the world.

Washington called it a 16th-century map debate dressed as reparations. Ukraine and Moldova abstained because Equal Earth shades Crimea differently from the rest of Ukraine—Kyiv said that opens a “Pandora’s box” of political maps. The author (via Monmonier and Harley) treats all maps as power: assertion, omission, or propaganda, not neutral paper.

The vote is non-binding. France says it will use Eckert IV; Mercator will still run most phones and GIS. The piece’s point: drawing a line is already politics—“I chart, therefore it is”—and this resolution will not settle that.

There is much in the nature of a map.  The very drawing of a line signifies an assertion, an acceptance, or even a repudiation of power.  Borders are delineated for reasons of interest and understanding.  I chart, therefore it is.  Areas of territorial dispute are reconciled by the cartographer’s handy reconciliations for the given moment.  One day, the Polish Corridor exists like some sinister geopolitical ploy.  Next, it vanishes into historical mist.  Countries born one day, gone the next, only to be reborn through a set of new borders.  Partitions decided upon and inflicted.  (No empire did this better than the British.)

On September 4, the UN General Assembly decided by a vast margin that a more representative map of continental landmasses should be endorsed in the form of the Equal Earth cartographic projection.  Launched in 2018 by the cartographers Bojan Savric of the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Tom Patterson of the US National Park Service, and Bernhard Jenny of Monash University, the map, according to Savric, “preserves the relative surface areas of continents and, as much as possible, shows their shapes as they appear on the globe.”  

The........

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