Injustice unmasked: a systematic review of social justice struggles during the COVID pandemic in Canada.

Economic transformation today is fundamentally shaped by the pursuit of environmental sustainability. The emergence of green economies encompassing low-carbon industries, markets for renewables, environmental governance systems, and sustainable finance tools has introduced a complex new layer to economic activity, demanding novel forms of understanding, adaptation, and decision-making by both individuals and institutions (). However, this transformation has not followed a linear trajectory. A defining feature of the era is green economic volatility, seen in unpredictable fluctuations in the value of green assets, the policy environment, environmental regulation, and sustainable investment returns (). Successfully navigating this new landscape requires not just economic expertise but also a broad set of cognitive skills and educational backgrounds to help people comprehend, respond to, and adapt to volatile, sustainability-driven economies. In this context, the competencies of information technology (IT) and English language education have come into prominence as two dimensions of human capital (). Although these two domains appear to differ in their traditional academic and professional uses, their intersection in the context of the “Digital Green Economy” is an intriguing topic for interdisciplinary research. Cognitive literacy is essential, as financial markets, environmental data platforms, international climate policy discourses, and green investment ecosystems are increasingly becoming digital. At the same time, English language skills are essential in the scientific and academic world, as the primary language for international environmental agreements, digital information, and financial reporting (). Further, English language skills are playing an increasingly important role as a gateway to accessing, processing, and applying green economic knowledge, while also serving as the dominant language of the global scientific and academic world, financial reporting, international environmental agreements, and digital information. Combined, these two learning skills are suspected to influence the perceptions of risk greatly, the building of understanding, and ultimately the behavioral response of individuals to situations of green economic uncertainty (). Recent research largely focuses separately on green finance and human capital development, but very few studies have examined how IT and English interact to shape cognitive and behavioral responses within the volatile green economic context. While the literature considers financial literacy’s effect on investment choices, the economic value of digital skills, and how language education facilitates global market access, the connection between educational competencies, cognitive processing of economic information, and behavioral adaptation to market greening remains underexplored (). This study addresses this gap by examining IT education and English language teaching not just as instrumental skills, but as cognitive frameworks that influence how individuals interpret and engage with the complex realities of the green economic transition. More specifically, three distinct literatures bear on this question: research on financial and digital literacy in relation to economic decision-making (); work on the economic returns to digital skills in information-intensive settings (); and scholarship on language proficiency as a means of accessing globally produced scientific, regulatory, and financial knowledge (). These literatures have developed largely in isolation, and comparatively little work has examined how IT competency and English proficiency jointly shape cognitive and behavioral responses to specifically green economic volatility.