The United Nations has adopted a West African country’s proposal for a new world map to replace one created in the 16th century.

The vote on Friday was almost unanimous. Only one country — the United States — voted against the proposed map, which more accurately reflects the size of Africa and other regions, calling it “radical.” 

The resolution, titled “Correct the Map,” officially phases out the standard Mercator map, which cartographers say distorts the actual size of landmasses.

Tom Patterson, a retired cartographer for the U.S. National Park Service, is a co-creator of the Equal Earth map and says it provides a much-needed update.

“That was extremely useful during the age of exploration and European colonialism,” Patterson told NPR in an interview last year. “If you’re using the Mercator map as a world map, say, in the classroom, students would just have a completely warped view of the size of countries in the world.”

Greenland, for example, appears equal in size to the entire continent of Africa when, in reality, the autonomous Danish territory is 14 times smaller. 

The vote was 164 to one, with six other countries — Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine — abstaining. All other member nations supported the proposal, led by Togo.

“When the United Nations questions why it is losing legitimacy in the world and is not taken seriously time and again, we point to resolutions such as this,” Yaryna Ferencevych, a U.S. representative to the United Nations, said in a statement explaining the U.S. dissent.

“While this initiative is presented as an anodyne effort to update cartographic proportions, the United States clearly sees it cannot be separated from the much larger and more radical ideological project it belongs to,” Ferencevych added.

Ukraine said it disagreed with the new map’s reflection of Russian territory.

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