Federal state budgetary institution of science, the Institute for Water and Environmental Problems of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IWEP SB RAS) is the first academic Institute in the Altai. The founder of the Institute is the Russian Federation. Currently, the Federal Agency for scientific organizations exercises the founders functions and powers. Prior to 2014, IWEP SB RAS was a part of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Siberian Branch). The Institute operates under the scientific and methodical leadership of the Department of Earth Sciences RAS and the United Scientific Council of SB RAS on Earth Sciences.

IWEP SB RAS was founded in 1987 on the base of laboratories of the institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, involved in natural resources and environmental studies. These were the laboratory of hydrophysics and ecology of water bodies (Institute of Hydrodynamics), laboratory of ecology and nature management (Institute of Geography), laboratory of water problems (United Institute of Geology, Geophysics and Mineralogy), laboratory of methods of adaptation of automated control systems (Computing Center), laboratory of biogeochemistry (Institute of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry), and the laboratory of water-economic problems (Energy Systems Institute). The Institute was founded due to the increasing need for the establishment of the research center in Siberia to expand and to coordinate the environmental research and the activities on the conservation and management of water and other natural resources.