Instead of responding to natural disasters after they happen, aid should be dedicated to helping countries prepare for future disasters, John Holmes, the U.N."s emergency relief coordinator, said Friday, Reuters reports. "You can"t stop the disasters happening but you can make an enormous difference to whether they kill people and, to some extent at least, have their livelihoods destroyed," Holmes said during a press conference in Geneva that came at the end of a week-long meeting that tackled ideas on how to best prepare poorer countries for natural disasters.