The UN General Assembly on September 4 adopted an important resolution by a vote of 164 in favor, 1 against, and 6 abstentions, encouraging countries to replace world maps drawn using the Mercator projection with new maps created under the Equal Earth project that more accurately reflect the actual area of each continent. The old-style Mercator map artificially enlarged regions such as North America and Europe while shrinking the true areas of developing regions such as Africa and South America, and has long drawn criticism.