Ribot earned a Ph.D. in Energy and Resources from Cal Berkeley. He came to the University of Illinois after serving for nine years as a Senior Associate at the World Resources Institute (WRI), an environmental think tank in Washington, D.C.

Ribot writes that his research is focused on topics of decentralization and democratic local government, natural resource tenure and access, distribution along natural resource commodity chains, and household vulnerability in the face of climate and environmental change.