Andrew R. Yatilman

Andrew R. Yatilman (b. 1952) is a government official from Satawal, Yap State. Educated at Xavier High School in Chuuk and Rockhurst College in the United States, he entered public service soon after the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) gained independence. He served as Lieutenant Governor of Yap (1999–2003) and later as Secretary of Transportation, Communications & Infrastructure (TC&I), overseeing aviation, ports, communications, and U.S. grant management.

Career in National Government

Since 2007, Yatilman has led the national agency responsible for environmental policy and disaster management—now the Department of Environment, Climate Change & Emergency Management (DECEM). He has represented the FSM at regional and global climate forums and chaired national consultations on adaptation planning. In 2020, he served as floor leader for Yap’s delegation to the 4th FSM Constitutional Convention.

Yatilman’s rise and high-profile service in Palikir suggest an ability to navigate the complexities of the FSM’s fragmented federal system. His two decades in the capital—1,000 miles from Yap—coincided with a massive and unprecedented expansion of the national government’s budget, bureaucracy, and authority. While that growth facilitated Yatilman’s own opportunities for advancement, it also fueled frustrations at the state level great enough to make secession a more plausible political option for Yap.

Throughout, Yatilman has paired administrative realism and consensus-building within the National Government with outspoken, even iconoclastic, engagement beyond it.

Climate Change Advocacy

Climate issues offer the clearest example of Yatilman’s attempt to balance technocratic pragmatism at home with moral advocacy abroad, presenting himself as a steady administrator navigating Micronesia’s aid-driven politics.

From COP23 in Bonn (2017) to COP28 in Dubai (2023), Yatilman has been a prominent voice in Micronesia’s climate diplomacy, urging major economies to phase out fossil fuels and accept “reasonable sacrifices” to protect island nations. His rhetoric often invokes climate injustice and the plight of low-emitting states.

Domestically, Yatilman is a senior official in a country wholly dependent on imported fuel and foreign aid. His advocacy underscores the paradox confronting small island governments: condemning the very systems they must rely upon. The FSM’s limited renewable capacity and dependence on U.S. assistance sharply constrain any domestic energy transition. Moreover, the nation’s institutional capacity has remained largely unchanged despite decades of outspoken climate diplomacy. Yatilman and others in the FSM government are not asking Micronesians themselves to make any “reasonable sacrifices,” nor is it evident that Micronesian voters would be willing to do so if asked.

Affiliation with the PRC

Yatilman has cultivated close ties with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) through environmental and disaster-management cooperation. In July 2024, he presided over a ceremony in Palikir marking China’s US $600,000 drought-assistance grant, praising Ambassador Wu Wei and highlighting “collaboration between the two nations.” He cited Chinese-hosted training in Guangdong on drones and early-warning systems, framing Chinese aid as integral to the FSM’s disaster-preparedness capacity.

Despite the FSM’s defense-oriented Compact of Free Association with the United States, Yatilman maintains visible links with Chinese scientific and climate institutions, frequently appearing alongside PRC envoys at joint events. His tone is consistently deferential, portraying China as a strategic partner in the FSM’s climate-resilience agenda—part of a broader pattern that positions him as the government’s principal interlocutor in Micronesia’s expanding environmental engagement with Beijing.

FSM Congress Candidacy

In September 2025, Yatilman announced his candidacy in the special election to complete the term of the late Senator and former President Joseph J. Urusemal. The election, scheduled for November 12, 2025, will determine who fills the remainder of the term as Yap State’s at-large representative to the FSM Congress. Traditionally, this congressional seat—one of two allotted to Yap—has always been held by candidates from the Outer Islands and is widely regarded as their reserved domain within Yap’s informal balance of representation.

Alongside Yatilman, two other Outer Island leaders entered the race: Faustino Yangmog of Ulithi and Jeese Salalu of Fais. Paradoxically—and in what may be a response to former Governor Jeese Salalu’s own precedent-breaking ascent to the governorship in 2021—a Yapese candidate, John Mafel, also filed to run, challenging for the first time the long-standing understanding that the at-large seat belongs to the Outer Islands.